Conference: Agent-Based Modeling 2017: Agent-Based Models in the Social, Human-Environment, and Life Sciences

该奖项将支持一个研讨会，该研讨会将汇集来自广泛领域的专家，以审查和推动基于代理的模型(ABM)在社会、人类环境和生命科学中的开发和使用。这次会议将促进全社会对增强和扩大基于主体的建模的价值和效用的问题的审议，以达到学术和实用的目的。会议将推进对当前反弹道导弹开发和使用的优势和不足的多方面、以社区为基础的审查。会议及其后续产品将为许多相关领域确定激励和方向，以开发基于面向服务的ABM设计和平台的更强大、用户友好的工具。研讨会还有可能促进以学术为基础的ABM开发者和用户与商业公司之间的互动，这种方式可能会促进ABM软件和能力的进步。由于与会者来自不同的领域，会议将促进更多跨学科的发展和先进方法的使用。基于代理的模型的使用在过去20年中迅速增加。自20世纪90年代以来，报告ABM开发或使用的文章数量呈指数级增长，涵盖了包括地理学、生态学、人类环境科学、土地系统科学和社会学在内的各种科学领域。基于代理的模型的一个优点是可以表示代理-代理和代理-环境的相互作用、局部级别的信息和异质性、非线性、反馈以及个人级别的活动和决策。ABMS还可用于集成跨多个系统的数据和模型，以及解决跨空间、时间和组织规模的问题。尽管取得了这些进展，但ABM开发人员和用户面临着一些挑战，包括模型验证和确认的困难、非建模专家的学习曲线陡峭、缺乏共同的标准或协议，以及对其透明度和可重用性的限制。为了应对这些挑战，30多名ABM建模师和用户将聚集在一起，以确定基于代理的建模技术的最新水平的优势和劣势。与会者将就一系列主题进行一系列讨论，这些主题可能包括模型验证、人类决策建模、模型透明度和可重用性，以及开发能够更好地利用“大数据”的ABM。学员还将确定ABM社区的资源、协作领域、潜在任务和未来方向。会议结束后的见解和产品预计将包括一篇关于ABM的综合论文和几篇专题论文；一本关于ABM科学、技术和应用的书；以及一个共享有用ABM资源的在线资源库。组织者预计这次会议将于2017年春季举行，很可能是在加利福尼亚州的圣地亚哥。

This award will support a workshop that will bring together experts from a broad range of fields to examine and advance the development and use of agent-based models (ABMs) in the social, human-environment, and life sciences. The conference will facilitate community-wide consideration of issues that enhance and broaden the value and utility of agent-based modeling for scholarly and practical purposes. The conference will advance a multi-faceted, community-based examination of current strengths and shortcomings of ABM development and use. The conference and its follow-up products will identify incentives and directions for many related fields to develop more robust, user-friendly tools based on service-oriented ABM designs and platforms. The workshop also has the potential to facilitate interactions between academic-based ABM developers and users and commercial companies in ways that may facilitate advances in ABM software and capabilities. Because of the diversity of fields from which participants are drawn, the conference will promote more interdisciplinary development and use of advanced methodologies.The use of agent-based models has increased rapidly over the last two decades. The number of articles reporting the development or use of ABMs has increased at an exponential rate since the 1990s, spanning a diverse range of scientific communities that includes geography, ecology, human-environmental science, land-system science, and sociology. A strength of agent-based models has been the potential for representing agent-agent and agent-environment interactions, local-level information and heterogeneity, nonlinearity, feedback, and individual-level activity and decision-making. ABMs also are useful for integrating data and models across multiple systems and for addressing problems across spatial, temporal, and organizational scales. Despite these advances, a number of challenges confront ABM developers and users, including difficulty in model verification and validation, steep learning curves for non-modeling experts, and the lack of common standards or protocols, and limitations regarding their transparency and reusability. To address these challenges, more than three dozen individuals who are ABM modelers and users will gather to identify strengths and weaknesses in the state-of-the-science of agent-based modeling. Participants will engage in a set of discussions on a range of topics that may include model validation, modeling of human decisions, model transparency and reusability, and developing ABMs that can better use "big data." Participants also will identify resources, areas for collaboration, potential tasks, and future directions for the ABM community. Insights and products after the conclusion of the conference are expected to include a synthesis paper and several topical papers dealing with ABMs; a book about ABM science, technology, and application; and an online repository that shares useful ABM resources. Organizers expect this conference to be conducted during the spring months of 2017, most likely in San Diego, California.