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Cellular Automata vs. Agent-Based Models
From: |
Dawn Trembath |
Subject: |
Cellular Automata vs. Agent-Based Models |
Date: |
Fri, 01 Oct 1999 11:03:51 -0400 |
I'm trying to understand the distinction between Cellular Automata &
Agent-Based Models. The information on Craig Reynold's webpage
http://www.red.com/cwr/ibm.html was very helpful, with his basic
distinction being that in a CA model you look at the world as a dense and
uniform dissection of space, whereas in an agent-based design your world is
based on specific individuals distributed within the space. I'm now trying
to understand the practical issue of why one would choose to use a CA
representation, vs an ABM approach.
On one hand, there's a very staightforward answer - you use the approach
that best fits your problem. But, since it appears that there is a fair
amount of overlap between the two, things are still a bit muddy for me. In
a CA model, if you allow your automata to be mobile, and to act
non-homogeneously through the application of If-Then rules, I can think of
examples where I would have a hard time deciding between the two approaches.
Maybe some direct questions would clear this up for me the fastest. Why
was Swarm implemented using an Agent-Based approach as opposed to a very
unrestricted CA approach? If anyone is modeling a system that could be
represented using either design, why did you choose the one you did? Does
a commonly used tool exist for building CA models? (StarLogo? In the CA
studies I've seen, people seem to write their own code.) Finally, if
anyone knows of a reference where the two approaches are compared, I'd
appreciate hearing about it.
Thanks very much for any insight you can provide.
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- Cellular Automata vs. Agent-Based Models,
Dawn Trembath <=