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Introductory tutorial: Agent-based modeling and simulation

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 Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference
S. Jain, R.R. Creasey, J. Himmelspach, K.P. White, and M. Fu, eds.

INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL: AGENT-BASED MODELING AND SIMULATION

Charles M. Macal
Michael J. North

Argonne National Laboratory

Center for Complex Adaptive Systems Simulation (CAS2)
Decision & Information Sciences Division
Argonne, IL 60439 USA

ABSTRACT

Agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) is an approach to modeling systems comprised of indi-
vidual, autonomous, interacting “agents.” There is much interest in many application problem domains in
developing agent-based models. Agent-based modeling offers ways to model individual behaviors and
how behaviors affect others in ways that have not been available before. Applications range from model-
ing agent behavior in supply chains and the stock market, to predicting the success of marketing cam-
paigns and the spread of epidemics, to projecting the future needs of the healthcare system. Progress in
the area suggests that ABMS promises to have far-reaching effects on the way that businesses use com-
puters to support decision-making and researchers use agent-based models as electronic laboratories to
aid in discovery. This brief tutorial introduces agent-based modeling by describing the basic ideas of
ABMS, discussing some applications, and addressing methods for developing agent-based models.

1 INTRODUCTION

Agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) is a modeling approach that has gained increasing atten-
tion over the past 15 years or so. This growth trend is evidenced by the increasing numbers of applica-
tions (Table 1), articles appearing in modeling and applications journals, funded programs that call for
agent-based models incorporating elements of human and social behavior, the growing number of confer-
ences on or that have tracks dedicated to agent-based modeling, the demand for ABMS courses and in-
structional programs, and the number of presentations at conferences such as the WSC that reference
agent-based modeling. Some contend that ABMS “is a third way of doing science” and could augment
traditional deductive and inductive reasoning as discovery methods (Axelrod 1997). This tutorial provides
an introduction to agent-based modeling and simulation. The goals are to show that ABMS is:

 Useful: Why ABMS is an appropriate modeling approach for a large class of problems and has
advantages over conventional modeling approaches in many cases,
 Usable: How ABMS is advancing to the point of producing portable, extensible, and transferable
software, with better integrated development environments, and
 Used: How good ABMS applications are being developed to solve practical problems.

978-1-4577-2109-0/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 1456

 Macal and North

Table 1: A sample of recent agent-based applications available on the web (all application use the Repast
agent-based modeling toolkit)
Application Area: Model Description:
Agriculture A spatial individual-based model prototype for assessing potential exposure of farm-
workers conducting small-scale agricultural production (Leyk, Binder, and Nuckols
2009).
Air Traffic Control Agent-based model of air traffic control to analyze control policies and performance of an
air traffic management facility (Conway 2006)
Anthropology Agent-based model of prehistoric settlement patterns and political consolidation in the
Lake Titicaca basin of Peru and Bolivia (Griffin and Stanish 2007)
Biomedical Research The Basic Immune Simulator, an agent-based model to study the interactions between in-
nate and adaptive immunity (Folcik, An, and Orosz 2007)
Crime Analysis Agent-based model that uses a realistic virtual urban environment, populated with virtual
burglar agents (Malleson 2010).
Ecology Agent-based model to investigate the trade-off between road avoidance and salt pool spa-
tial memory in the movement behavior of moose in the Laurentides Wildlife Reserve
(Grosman et al. 2011).
Agent-based model of predator-prey relationships between transient killer whales and
other marine mammals (Mock and Testa 2007).
A risk-based approach for analyzing the intentional introduction of non-native oysters on
the US east coast (Opaluch, Anderson, and Schnier 2005).
Energy Analysis Agent-based model to identify potential interventions for the uptake of wood-pellet heat-
ing in Norway (Sopha et al. 2011).
Agent-based model for scenario development of offshore wind energy (Mast et al. 2007).
Epidemiology Synthetic age-specific contact matrices are computed through simulation of a simple in-
dividual-based model (Iozzi et al. 2010).
Evacuation A simulation of tsunami evacuation using a modified form of Helbing’s social-force
model applied to agents (Puckett 2009).
Market Analysis A large-scale agent-based model for consumer marketing developed in collaboration with
a Fortune 50 firm (North et al. 2009).
An illustrative agent-based model of a consumer airline market to derive market share for
the upcoming year (Kuhn et al. 2010).
Agent-based simulation that models the possibilities for a future market in sub-orbital
space tourism (Charania et al. 2006).
Organizational Deci- An agent-based model to allow managers to simulate employee knowledge-sharing be-
sion Making haviors (Wang et al. 2009).
An agent-based model to evaluate the dynamic behavior of a global enterprise, consider-
ing system-level performance as well as components' behaviors (Behdani et al. 2009).
Agent based modeling approach to allow negotiations in order to achieve a global objec-
tive, specifically for planning the location of intermodal freight hubs (van Dam et al.
2007).
Social Networks An agent-based model of email-based social networks, in which individuals establish,
maintain and allow atrophy of links through contact-lists and emails (Menges, Mishra,
and Narzisi 2008).

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Agent-based modeling is being applied to many areas, spanning human social, physical and biological
systems. Applications range from modeling ancient civilizations that have been gone for hundreds of
years, to designing new markets for products that do not exist right now. Heath, Ciarallo, and Hill (2009)
provide a review of agent-based modeling applications. Selected applications that use the Repast agent-
based modeling toolkit are listed in Table 1. All of the cited publications make the case for agent-based
modeling as the preferred modeling approach versus other modeling techniques for the problem ad-
dressed. They argue that agent-based modeling is used because only agent-based models can explicitly
incorporate the complexity arising from individual behaviors and interactions that exist in the real-world.
We refer the reader to previous papers on other introductory topics in ABMS not covered here, such
as the history of ABMS, connections of ABMS to complex adaptive systems and artificial life, and the re-
lationships of ABMS to other modeling and simulation techniques (Macal and North 2010, Macal and
North 2009, Macal 2009, North and Macal 2007, Macal and North 2007). Publications that are especially
good introductions to agent-based modeling include Epstein and Axtell (1996), Gilbert and Troitzsch
(2005), and Bonabeau (2001), as well as the ACE web site (Tesfatsion 2011).
This tutorial is organized into two parts. The first part is a tutorial on how to think about ABMS. The
background on ABMS and its motivating principles are described along with some exemplary applica-
tions. The second part is a tutorial on how to do ABMS. It addresses modeling approaches and toolkits for
developing agent-based models.

2 HOW TO THINK ABOUT AGENT-BASED MODELING

2.1 Structure of an agent-based model

A typical agent-based model has three elements:

1. Agents, their attributes and behaviors.

2. Agent relationships and methods of interaction. An underlying topology of connectedness defines
how and with whom agents interact.
3. Agents’ environment. Agents live in and interact with their environment in addition to other agents.

A model developer must identify, model, and program these elements to create an agent-based model.
The structure of a typical agent-based model is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: General elements of an agent-based model

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A computational engine for simulating agent behaviors and agent interactions is then needed to make
the model run. An agent-based modeling toolkit, programming language or other implementation pro-
vides this capability. To run an agent-based model is to have agents repeatedly execute their behaviors
and interactions. This process often does, but is not necessarily modeled to, operate over a timeline, as in
time-stepped, activity-based, or discrete-event simulation structures.

2.2 Agents
There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the term agent in the context of ABMS. It is
the subject of much discussion and occasional debate. The issue is more than an academic one, as it often
surfaces when one makes a claim that their model is agent-based or when one is trying to discern whether
such claims made by others have validity. There are important implications of the term agent-based when
used to describe a model in terms of the model’s capabilities or potential capabilities that could be at-
tained through relatively minor modification. A formal definition of agent is beyond the scope of this pa-
per; in the literature informal descriptions of agent tend to agree on more points than they disagree. Some
modelers consider any type of independent component, whether it be a software component or a model to
be an agent (Bonabeau 2001). Some authors insist that a component’s behavior must also be adaptive in
order for it to be considered an agent. Casti (1997) argues that agents should contain both base-level rules
for behavior as well as a higher-level set of “rules to change the rules.” The base-level rules provide re-
sponses to the environment, while the rules-to-change-the-rules provide adaptation. Jennings (2000) pro-
vides a computer science view of agent that emphasizes the essential characteristic of autonomous behav-
ior.
For practical modeling purposes, we consider agents to have certain properties and attributes, as fol-
lows (Figure 2).

Figure 2: A Typical Agent

Autonomy. An agent is autonomous and self-directed. An agent can function independently in its en-
vironment and in its interactions with other agents, generally from a limited range of situations that are of
interest and that arise in the model. When we refer to an agent’s behavior, we refer to a general process
that links the information the agent senses from its environment and interactions to its decisions and ac-
tions.
Modularity. Agents are modular or self-contained. An agent is an identifiable, discrete individual with
a set of characteristics or attributes, behaviors, and decision-making capability. The modularity require-
ment implies that an agent has a boundary, and one can easily determine whether something (that is, an
element of the model’s state) is part of an agent, is not part of an agent, or is a characteristic shared
among agents.

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Sociality. An agent is social, interacting with other agents. Common agent interaction protocols in-
clude contention for space and collision avoidance, agent recognition, communication and information
exchange, influence, and other domain-or application-specific mechanisms.
Conditionality. An agent has a state that varies over time. Just as a system has a state consisting of the
collection of its state variables, an agent also has a state that represents its condition, the essential varia-
bles associated with its current situation. An agent’s state consists of a set or subset of its attributes. The
state of an agent-based model is the collective states of all the agents along with the state of the environ-
ment. An agent’s behaviors are conditioned on its state. As such, the richer the set of an agent’s possible
states, the richer the set of behaviors that an agent can have.
Agents often have additional properties, which may or may not be considered as defining properties
or necessary for agency. An agent may have explicit goals that drive its behavior. The goals are not nec-
essarily objectives to maximize as much as criteria against which to assess the effectiveness of its deci-
sion and actions. An agent may have the ability to learn and adapt its behaviors based on its experiences.
Individual learning and adaptation requires an agent to have memory, usually in the form of a dynamical-
ly updated attribute of the agent. Interesting and useful agent models are developed regularly that do not
contain adaptive agents. Another optional feature concerns agent heterogeneity. Interesting and useful
agent models are developed regularly that contain nearly identical agents.

2.3 Agent Relationships

Agent-based modeling concerns itself with modeling agent relationships and agent interactions as much
as it does modeling agents and agent behaviors. The primary issues of modeling agent interactions are
specifying who is, or could be, connected to who, and the dynamics governing the mechanisms of the in-
teractions. For example, an agent-based model of Internet growth would include mechanisms that specify
who connects to who, why, and when.
Common topologies for representing social agent interactions are as follows:

1. Soup. A nonspatial model in which agents have no locational attribute.

2. Grid or lattice. Cellular automata represent agent interaction patterns and available local infor-
mation by a grid or lattice; cells immediately surrounding an agent are its neighborhood.
3. Euclidean space. Agents roam in 2D or 3D spaces.
4. Geographic Information System (GIS). Agents move over realistic geo-spatial landscapes.
5. Networks. Networks may be static (links pre-specified) or dynamic (links determined endoge-
nously).

No matter what agent-interaction topology is used in an agent-based model to connect the agents, the
essential idea is that agents only interact at any given time with a limited (small) number of other agents
out of all the agents in the population. This notion is implemented by defining a local neighborhood and
thereby limiting interaction to a small number of agents that happen to be in that neighborhood. This is
not to say that agents need to be located in close proximity to one another spatially to be able to interact.
The network topology allows agents to be linked on the basis of relationships other than proximity. Most
empirically-based social networks have characteristic network topologies with individual agents having
limited numbers of connections.

2.4 Emergence in Agent-based Models

One of the motivating concepts for agent-based modeling is its ability to capture emergence. Agent-based
models that are completely described by simple, deterministic rules and based only on local information
can produce sustainable patterns that self-organize themselves and have not been explicitly programmed
into the models. Emergence refers to the emergence of order. Emergence can be illustrated by simple
agent-based models such as Life and Boids. These observations have practical implications for developing

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and interpreting agent-based models. More complex models of the kind that people are likely to build to
represent real-world phenomenon can also exhibit emergent behavior resulting from agent interactions.
Based on simple rules of behavior and the nature of agent interactions, natural systems seemingly ex-
hibit collective intelligence, or swarm intelligence, even without the existence of or the direction provided
by a central authority. Swarm intelligence has inspired agent-based modeling as well as practical optimi-
zation techniques, such as ant colony optimization and particle swarm optimization that have been used to
solve practical scheduling and routing problems (Bonabeau, Dorigo, and Theraulaz 1999). These types of
algorithms can be implemented in agent-based frameworks.

3 HOW TO DO AGENT-BASED MODELING

3.1 Thinking Through an Agent Model

It is useful to ask a series of agent-specific questions before developing an agent-based model (Table 2).
The answers to these questions help define the scope and level of detail for which it is appropriate to
model the system. They imply the resources required for successfully completing the project as well as
help identifying likely bottlenecks to development.

Table 2: Questions to Ask Before Developing an Agent-based Model

Model Purpose and Value-added of Agent-based Modeling:
What specific problem is the model being developed to address?
What specific questions should the model answer?
What kind of information should the model provide to help make or support a decision?
Why might agent-based modeling be a desirable approach?
What value-added does agent-based modeling bring to the problem that other modeling approaches cannot
bring?
All About Agents:
What should the agents be in the model?
Who are the decision makers in the system?
What are the entities that have behaviors?
Where might the data come from, especially on agent behaviors, for such a model?
Agent Data:
What data on agents is simply descriptive (static attributes)?
What agent attributes are calculated endogenously by the model and updated for the agents (dynamic attrib-
utes)?
What is the agents’ environment? How do the agents interact with the environment? Is agent mobility through
space an important consideration?
Agent Behaviors:
What agent behaviors are of interest?
What decisions do the agents make and what information is required to make such decisions?
What behaviors are being acted upon?
What actions are being taken by the agents?
How would we represent the agent behaviors? By If-Then rules? By adaptive probabilities, such as in rein-
forcement learning? By regression models or neural networks?
Agent Interactions:
How do the agents interact with each other?
How do the agents interact with the environment?
How expansive or focused are agent interactions?
Agent Recap:
How do we design a set of experiments to explore the importance of uncertain behaviors, data and parameters?
How might we validate the model, especially the agent behaviors and the agent interaction mechanisms?

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Developing an agent-based model requires getting behavioral theory and modeling frameworks for
the agents included in the model, getting a process for developing the agent model, and getting a platform
for building the model (see figure 3).

ABMS Development
Prototyping

Model Architectural Design

Agent and Agent Rule Design

Agent Environment Design

Implementation

Verification and Validation

Figure 3: Agent-based Model Development Process

3.2 Designing Agent-based Models

Modern software practices are based on a template design approach in which recurring elements are codi-
fied and reused for new applications; this approach has proven very valuable in designing models as well
as software. Several formats have been proposed for describing agent-based model designs. Chief among
these standards is Grimm et al.’s (2006) Overview, Design Concepts, and Details (ODD) protocol. ODD
describes models using a three-part approach: overview, concepts, and details. The model overview in-
cludes a statement of the model’s intent, a description of the main variables, and a discussion of the agent
activities and timing. The design concepts include a discussion of the foundations of the model, and the
details include the initial setup configuration, input value definitions, and descriptions of any embedded
models (Grimm et al. 2006).
North and Macal (2011) discuss product design patterns for agent-based modeling. For example, de-
sign patterns that have proven themselves useful for agent-based modeling include:

 Scheduler Scramble: The problem addressed is when two or more agents from the ABM pattern can
schedule events that occur during the same clock tick. Getting to execute first may be an advantage or
disadvantage. How do you allow multiple agents to act during the same clock tick without giving a
long-term advantage to any one agent?
 Context and Projection Hierarchy: The problem addressed is how to organize complex spaces into a
single unified form such that individual agents can simultaneously exist in multiple spaces and the
spaces themselves can be seamlessly removed and added.
 Strategy: The problem addressed is how to let clients invoke rules that may be defined long after the
clients are implemented? There are a set of rules that need to be dynamically selected while a pro-
gram is running. There is a need to separate rule creation from rule activation.

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 Learning: The problem addressed is to how to model agents that adapt or learn. There is a need for
agents to change their behavior over time based on their experiences.

An agent-based model developer uses design patterns in the following way. The developer decides
on how to model important features of a real-world system, such as, for example, how time should be
treated in the model. The real world process moves forward in continuous time, but the modeler may de-
cide that for the given application, important events only occur at discrete time points that can be sched-
uled to occur in advance at constant time intervals (as in time-stepped simulation), according to assumed
distributions for activity times (as in discrete event simulation), or according to thresholds of agent state
variables being reached (as in combined continuous/discrete event simulation). If, for example, the time-
stepped approach is taken, other technical questions must be answered about how to deal with simultane-
ous events. The Scheduler Scramble pattern above is a possible solution.

3.3 Modeling Agent Systems

Identifying agents, accurately specifying their behaviors, and appropriately representing agent interactions
are the keys to developing useful agent models. One begins developing an agent-based model by identify-
ing the agent types (classes) along with their attributes. Agents are generally the decision-makers in a sys-
tem whether they be human, organizational, or automated. Once the agents are defined, agent behaviors
are specified. One needs to have a theory of agent behavior as a basis for modeling agent behavior. For
example, a normative model in which agents attempt to optimize a well-defined objective can be a useful
starting point to eventually developing more descriptive and domain-specific behavioral heuristics. Alter-
natively, one may begin with a bounded rationality model or a generic behavioral heuristic, such as an-
choring and adjustment, to describe agent behavior or more broadly a formal behavioral modeling frame-
work such as the Belief-Desire-Intent (BDI) model (Wooldridge 2009).
In addition to agents, an agent-based model consists of agent relationships. One defines the agent re-
lationships and then adds the methods that control which agents interact, when they interact, and how they
interact.

3.4 Advanced Agent-based Modeling

Often, an agent-based modeler would like to include a variety of advanced capabilities in their model.
These capabilities include distributed computing implementations, artificial intelligence and machine
learning algorithms, geographical information systems (GIS), connections to relational databases, version
control systems (especially if there are multiple developers working on a project), and integrated devel-
opment environments (IDEs). It is often useful to first develop a core model that includes these capabili-
ties as connections or “stubs” to ensure the core model design is acceptable and to verify that scaling up
the design appears feasible. Agent-based modeling and software toolkits often provide advanced capa-
bilities such as these.

3.5 ABMS Software and Toolkits

Agent-based modeling can be done using general, all-purpose software or programming languages, or it
can be done using specially designed software and toolkits that address the specific requirements for
modeling agents. Agent modeling can be done in the small, on the desktop, or in the large, using large-
scale computing clusters, or it can be done at any scale in-between. Projects often begin small, using one
of the desktop ABMS tools, or whatever tool or programming language the developers are familiar with.
The initial prototype then grows in stages into a larger-scale agent-based model, often using dedicated
ABMS toolkits. Often one begins developing their first agent model using the approach that one is most
familiar with, or the approach that one finds easiest to learn given their background and experience.
We distinguish several approaches to building ABMS applications in terms of the scale of the soft-
ware that one can apply according to the following continuum:

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Desktop Computing for ABMS Application Development:

 Spreadsheets: Excel using the macro programming language VBA
 Dedicated Agent-based Prototyping Environments: Repast Simphony, NetLogo
 General Computational Mathematics Systems: MATLAB, Mathematica

Large-Scale (Scalable) Agent Development Environments:

 Repast
 Swarm
 MASON
 AnyLogic
 Other

General Programming Languages:

 C++
 Java
 Python

Desktop ABMS can be used to learn agent modeling, prototype basic agent behaviors, and perform
limited analyses. Desktop agent-based models can be simple, designed and developed in a period of a few
days by a single computer-literate modeler using tools learned in a few days or weeks. Desktop agent
modeling can be used to explore the potential of ABMS with relatively minor time and training invest-
ments, especially if one is already familiar with the tool.
Spreadsheets, such as Microsoft Excel, are in many ways the simplest approach to modeling. It is eas-
ier to develop models with spreadsheets than with many of the other tools, but the resulting models gen-
erally allow limited agent diversity, restrict agent behaviors, and have poor scalability compared to the
other approaches designed specifically for agent modeling. Agent-based modeling in spreadsheets re-
quires some macro-programming to be done in a language such as VBA (Visual Basic for Applications),
the macro programming language for Excel and other Microsoft Office applications. Significant agent
models have been developed entirely using spreadsheets. In previous WSC papers, we described an
spreadsheet implementation of a spatial agent-based shopper model (Macal and North 2007).
Special-purpose agent tools, such as NetLogo, provide special facilities focused on agent modeling.
NetLogo is a free ABMS environment developed at Northwestern University’s Center for Connected
Learning and Computer-Based Modeling (Wilensky 1999). The most directly visible common trait shared
by the various prototyping environments is that they are designed to get first-time users started as quickly
as possible. The NetLogo language uses a modified version of the Logo programming language (Harvey
1997). NetLogo was originally developed to support teaching, but it can be used to develop a wide range
of applications. NetLogo provides a graphical environment to create programs that control graphic “tur-
tles” that reside in a world of “patches” that is monitored by an “observer.” NetLogo continues as a sub-
ject of active development and new versions with expanded capabilities are released periodically.
General-purpose desktop computational mathematics system (CMS) with integrated development en-
vironments (IDEs), such as MATLAB and Mathematica, can be used to develop agent models, although
the agent-specific functionality has to be written by the developer from scratch, as there are no dedicated
libraries or modules that focus on agent-based modeling. The basic requirements is knowledge of how to
program in a scripting language. CMS environments have rich mathematical functions, and nearly any
mathematical relation or function that can be numerically calculated is available within these tools or their
add-on libraries. In some cases, the tools even support symbolic processing and manipulation, which is
useful for systems of equations that can be solved analytically and can be exploited quite effectively to do
agent-based modeling (Macal 2004). If a CMS environment is already familiar to a developer, this can be
a good place to start agent-based modeling.

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Many large-scale ABMS software environments are now freely available. These include Repast
(North, Collier and Vos, 2006), Swarm (SDG 2006; Minar et al. 1996), NetLogo (NetLogo 2009) and
MASON (GMU 2006) among many others. Proprietary toolkits are also available such as AnyLogic (XJ
Technologies 2009). A review and comparison of Java-based agent modeling toolkits is provided by To-
bias and Hoffman (2004) and Nikolai and Madey (2009).
Swarm was the first ABMS software development environment, launched in 1994 at the Santa Fe In-
stitute. Swarm was originally written in Objective C and was later fitted with a Java interface.
Following the original Swarm innovation, the Repast (REcursive Porous Agent Simulation Toolkit)
toolkit was developed as a pure Java implementation (North, Collier, and Vos 2006). Repast Simphony
(Repast S) is the latest version of Repast, designed to provide visual point-and-click tools for agent model
design, agent behavior specification, model execution, and results examination. The Repast S agent model
designer allows users to visually specify the logical structure of their models, the spatial (e.g., geographic
maps and networks) structure of their models, the kinds of agents in their models, and the behaviors of the
agents themselves. Once their models are specified, users can use the point-and-click Repast S runtime
environment to execute model runs as well as visualize and store results. The Repast S runtime environ-
ment includes automated results analysis and connections to a variety of spreadsheet, visualization, data
mining, and statistical analysis tools, virtually all of which are free and open source. Repast Simphony 2.0
also includes a ReLogo, a new Logo-like interface for specifying agent models (Ozik 2011).
As computational capabilities continue to advance in both hardware and software, new capabilities
are continuously being incorporated into the latest versions of ABMS toolkits. The field is advancing rap-
idly toward highly scalable, high productivity agent development environments.

4 WHY AND WHEN ABMS

We conclude by offering some ideas on the situations for which agent-based modeling can offer distinct
advantages to conventional simulation approaches such as discrete event simulation (Law 2007), systems
dynamics (Sterman 2000) and other quantitative modeling techniques. Axtell (2000) discusses several
reasons for agent-based modeling especially compared to traditional approaches to modeling economic
systems. When is it beneficial to think in terms of agents? When one or more of the following criteria are
satisfied:

 When the problem has a natural representation as being comprised of agents

 When there are decisions and behaviors that can be well-defined
 When it is important that agents have behaviors that reflect how individuals actually behave (if
known)
 When it is important that agents adapt and change their behaviors
 When it is important that agents learn and engage in dynamic strategic interactions
 When it is important that agents have dynamic relationships with other agents, and agent relation-
ships form, change, and decay
 When it is important to model the processes by which agents form organizations, and adaptation
and learning are important at the organization level
 When it is important that agents have a spatial component to their behaviors and interactions
 When the past is no predictor of the future because the processes of growth and change are dy-
namic
 When scaling-up to arbitrary levels is important in terms of the number of agents, agent interac-
tions and agent states
 When process structural change needs to be an endogenous result of the model, rather than an in-
put to the model

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-
06CH11357. Portions of this tutorial have appeared in previous tutorial papers presented at the Winter
Simulation Conference for 2005 - 2009.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

CHARLES M. MACAL is the Director, Center for Complex Adaptive Agent Systems Simulation
(CAS2), Argonne National Laboratory. He is a member of the INFORMS-Simulation Society, Associa-
tion for Computing Machinery, the Society for Computer Simulation International, and the Systems Dy-
namics Society. Charles has a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences from Northwest-
ern and a Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue. Contact: [email protected].

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MICHAEL J. NORTH is the Deputy Director of CAS2 at Argonne. Michael has over 15 years of expe-
rience developing advanced modeling and simulation applications for the federal government, interna-
tional agencies, private industry, and academia. Michael has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Illi-
nois Institute of Technology. Contact: [email protected].

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