Agent Analyst
Below is an animation of an early version of the SOME model implemented in Agent Analyst with ArcGIS. The SOME model is a residential location model that creates patterns of urban growth. In this particular version residential household agents are homogeneous and each household has the same preference for aesthetic quality (the whiter background represents higher aesthetic quality) and distance to service centers. A single service center starts at the center of the landscape and new service centers are created following each 100th agent. A detailed description of the model is available on the SLUCE Outreach website, in the ESRI PRESS chapter listed below, and a netLogo version is also shown on this page. In this animation the agents have a preference weight for nearness to service centers of 0.9 and a 0.1 preference weight for aesthetic quality.
A larger full screen version of the animation is available here.
Ignore the "Loading..." annotation and use the controls at the bottom.
In Press. Robinson, D.T., and D.G. Brown. Querying and Changing Raster Data with Agent Analyst.
Kevin Johnston (ed), in Agent-Based Modeling in ArcGIS. ESRI Press.
SLUCE's Original Model for Exploration
The SOME model investigates the phenomenon of urban sprawl through residential settlement preferences and service center feedbacks. While I was not involved in the definition or creation of the SOME model, I did manage to prepare its NetLogo version for the web, as well as design the SLUCE Outreach web site that acts as a tutorial/slide show of the components that make up the NetLogo version of SOME. A number of experiments for pedagogical use also accompany the model.
Using Eclipse with RePast 3 (2004)
The instructions below are relatively old and the new Repast Simphony is integrated with Eclipse and provides a great plaform for agent-based model development. I leave these materials here for now just in case anyone needs them or has been referring to them. However, I will be removing them in the near future.
The majority of my agent-based modelling (ABM) is performed in Eclipse using the RePast simulation libraries. Both products are free and available online. I've often found setting up new environments to be tricky and therefore I've outlined the steps a modeller needs to perform in order to program with RePast in Eclipse. These instructions are based on those I received at the Agent2003 RePast workshop.
1) Set-up Eclipse for programming ABM with RePast - involves downloading and installing software.
2) Create a RePast Project - all models will point to this project in order to utilize the functionality of the RePast libraries.
3) Creating a RePast based ABM - using already created code available online, the user sets up a model and is able to run it.
I also noticed while posting these instructions that Charlie Gieseler has two great power point presentation (1, 2) that are very similar and have screen captures that may provide assistance.