Computer Science in Science PD: Agent Based Modeling of Complex Adaptive Systems - Discussion

The introduction of an invasive species into an environment. Examples that come to mind are the Zebra mussels and their effect on the round gobies and Great Lakes ecosystem, or the re-introduction of wolves in Yellowstone.

Traffic deaths occur most during the hours of 3pm-6pm when people are returning to work. This is according to a car insurance company:

The agents are the drivers. Factors include likelihood of accidents by age and number of vehicles on the road. The environment would include all streets and highways in a city setting and weather conditions. Evidence seems to suggest that the sheer number of people on the roads is the main factor in more deaths.

Carrie, great specifics on tornadoes. It’s interesting how scientists can give a warning when tornadoes may occur, but still cannot quite fully predict if they will occur. Yes, I agree that the warnings are based on modeling that we often see in weather reports.

In my chemical reaction system, the agents would be the reactants. The environment could include variables like amount of each reactant, temperature, dilution, etc.

I will focus on the example of an ecosystem with fish, kelp and sharks. This is a typical predator - prey ecosystem. The agents are kelp, fish, and sharks. The environment is the waterbody. The interactions are that the fish and shark move randomly through the environment, while the kelp is stationary. The fish eat kelp, and the sharks eat fish. Fish and sharks gain energy by eating, and lose energy by moving around. They can reproduce if they have enough energy, and they die if their energy goes to 0 or if they are eaten.

I chose this example because it ties in with something in the news in the past few years - the invasive species of Asian Carp in the Great Lakes. This could be modeled by having Asian Carp as an additional agent in the model. Their danger to the ecosystem is that Asian Carp eat a lot of plankton (this could be modeled as the kelp) and thereby deprivie native fish of their food source. The eating and reproductive traits of Asian Carp could be modeled and studied with our complex adaptive system models.

The environment is mountainous terrain.
Agents-

Fire- burns faster depending on terrain
Native vegetation- some fire resistant and or grows back faster than others
soil- erodes faster depending on terrain and amount and kind of vegetation
water- consistent rate

The phenomenon that I chose was the same as the one in the example video. I chose to model predator and prey relationships and how those relationships impact the size of the population of each. My agents would be rabbits, and wolves. The environment is forest. The interactions would be that the rabbits disappear when in contact with the wolves. When the wolves can’t touch the rabbits often they begin to disappear! you can also model envrionmental changes with temperature and what not

great use in Chemsitry for complex reactions!

phenomenon: genetic combination and reproduction of dna
agents: genetic information from both sets of parents, combined set of offspring
environment: egg/zygote/embryo
interactions: parent dna interacts with second set of dna, can be influenced by environment body lives in (skin cancer; exposure to uv radiation, radiation, certain viruses

I find it very interesting how you can combine agents or components in a ecosystem and let it run to find results.
This is an excellent research tool!

The phenomenon I was thinking of was plate tectonics. The environment is the earth’s crust. The agents would be the different plates. They come together, slide past one another, and move apart.
The interactions create volcanoes, trenches and ridges.