Complexity Explorer Santa Few Institute

This assignment does not show up once the deadline is past, but if you are working through after the fact you can still fill out the assignment and then grade yourself using the rubric in the next segment.

Model Questionnaire

These questions are intended to focus your thoughts on a phenomenon for which you would eventually like to build an ABM model. It is important to choose a phenomenon of limited scope so that you can make progress with your model.  Even if the phenomenon you would eventually like to address is large in scope, try to choose a sub-part of it as a starting point. For this assignment you do not need to submit any code, just answers to the following questions.

(1) What part of your phenomenon would you like to build a model of?  Make sure that the phenomenon is appropriate for an agent-based model that could be completed in the next month.

(2) What are the principal types of agents involved in this phenomenon?  Illustrate all of the agent types necessary for the model.

(3)   What properties do these agents have (describe by agent type)?  Describe for all agent types.

(4)   What actions (or behaviors) can these agents take (describe by agent type)? Describe all appropriate behaviors for all agent types.

(5)   In what kind of environment do these agents operate? Describe the basic environment type (e.g., spatial, network, featurespace, etc.) and fully describe the environment.

(6)   If you had to “discretize” the phenomenon into time steps, what events and in what order would occur during any one time step? Fully describe everything that happens during a time step.

(7)   What are the inputs to the model? Identify all relevant inputs.
(8)   What do you hope to observe from this model? Identify all relevant outputs.

Thank you in advance for your time and effort on these questionnaire.