Applications of Agent Technology in Traffic and Transportation

Applications of Agent Technology in Traffic and Transportation
Author: Franziska Klügl
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2006-03-30
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3764373636

Building effective and user-friendly transportation systems is one of the big challenges for engineers in the 21st century. There is an increasing need to understand, model, and govern such systems at both, the individual and the society level. Traffic and transportation scenarios are extraordinarily appealing for Distributed Artificial Intelligence, and (multi-)agent technology in particular. This book gives an overview of recent advances in agent-based transportation systems.

The Multi-Agent Transport Simulation MATSim

The Multi-Agent Transport Simulation MATSim
Author: Andreas Horni
Publisher: Ubiquity Press
Total Pages: 620
Release: 2016-08-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 190918876X

The MATSim (Multi-Agent Transport Simulation) software project was started around 2006 with the goal of generating traffic and congestion patterns by following individual synthetic travelers through their daily or weekly activity programme. It has since then evolved from a collection of stand-alone C++ programs to an integrated Java-based framework which is publicly hosted, open-source available, automatically regression tested. It is currently used by about 40 groups throughout the world. This book takes stock of the current status. The first part of the book gives an introduction to the most important concepts, with the intention of enabling a potential user to set up and run basic simulations. The second part of the book describes how the basic functionality can be extended, for example by adding schedule-based public transit, electric or autonomous cars, paratransit, or within-day replanning. For each extension, the text provides pointers to the additional documentation and to the code base. It is also discussed how people with appropriate Java programming skills can write their own extensions, and plug them into the MATSim core. The project has started from the basic idea that traffic is a consequence of human behavior, and thus humans and their behavior should be the starting point of all modelling, and with the intuition that when simulations with 100 million particles are possible in computational physics, then behavior-oriented simulations with 10 million travelers should be possible in travel behavior research. The initial implementations thus combined concepts from computational physics and complex adaptive systems with concepts from travel behavior research. The third part of the book looks at theoretical concepts that are able to describe important aspects of the simulation system; for example, under certain conditions the code becomes a Monte Carlo engine sampling from a discrete choice model. Another important aspect is the interpretation of the MATSim score as utility in the microeconomic sense, opening up a connection to benefit cost analysis. Finally, the book collects use cases as they have been undertaken with MATSim. All current users of MATSim were invited to submit their work, and many followed with sometimes crisp and short and sometimes longer contributions, always with pointers to additional references. We hope that the book will become an invitation to explore, to build and to extend agent-based modeling of travel behavior from the stable and well tested core of MATSim documented here.

Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation

Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation
Author: Kenneth Train
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2009-07-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521766559

This book describes the new generation of discrete choice methods, focusing on the many advances that are made possible by simulation. Researchers use these statistical methods to examine the choices that consumers, households, firms, and other agents make. Each of the major models is covered: logit, generalized extreme value, or GEV (including nested and cross-nested logits), probit, and mixed logit, plus a variety of specifications that build on these basics. Simulation-assisted estimation procedures are investigated and compared, including maximum stimulated likelihood, method of simulated moments, and method of simulated scores. Procedures for drawing from densities are described, including variance reduction techniques such as anithetics and Halton draws. Recent advances in Bayesian procedures are explored, including the use of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and its variant Gibbs sampling. The second edition adds chapters on endogeneity and expectation-maximization (EM) algorithms. No other book incorporates all these fields, which have arisen in the past 25 years. The procedures are applicable in many fields, including energy, transportation, environmental studies, health, labor, and marketing.

Advances in Social Simulation 2015

Advances in Social Simulation 2015
Author: Wander Jager
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2017-03-16
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319472534

This book highlights recent developments in the field, presented at the Social Simulation 2015 conference in Groningen, The Netherlands. It covers advances both in applications and methods of social simulation. Societal issues addressed range across complexities in economic systems, opinion dynamics and civil violence, changing mobility patterns, different land-use, transition in the energy system, food production and consumption, ecosystem management and historical processes. Methodological developments cover how to use empirical data in validating models in general, formalization of behavioral theory in agent behavior, construction of artificial populations for experimentation, replication of models, and agent-based models that can be run in a web browser. Social simulation is a rapidly evolving field. Social scientists are increasingly interested in social simulation as a tool to tackle the complex non-linear dynamics of society. Furthermore, the software and hardware tools available for social simulation are becoming more and more powerful. This book is an important source for readers interested in the newest developments in the ways in which the simulation of social interaction contributes to our understanding and managing of complex social phenomena.

Urban Informatics

Urban Informatics
Author: Wenzhong Shi
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 941
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811589836

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity.

Agent Based Simulation for a Sustainable Society and Multiagent Smart Computing

Agent Based Simulation for a Sustainable Society and Multiagent Smart Computing
Author: Stephen Cranefield
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2012-11-27
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3642356125

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the two workshops held at the 14th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2011, held in Wollongong, Australia, in November. The workshops were, Workshop on Agent Based Simulation for a Sustainable Society (ABSSS 2011) and International Workshop on Multi-Agent Smart Computing (MASmart 2011). The 8 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers cover topics from agent based simulation for a sustainable society and on multi-agent smart computing.

Multiagent System Technologies

Multiagent System Technologies
Author: Klaus Fischer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2006-09-21
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3540460578

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th German Conference on Multiagent Systems Technologies, MATES 2006, co-located with Net.ObjectDays (NoDe 2006). The 15 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on agent communication and interaction, applications and simulation, agent planning, agent-oriented software engineering, as well as trust and security.

Traffic and Granular Flow ’99

Traffic and Granular Flow ’99
Author: D. Helbing
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3642597513

"Are there common phenomena and laws in the dynamic behavior of granular materials, traffic, and socio-economic systems?" The answers given at the international workshop "Traffic and Granular Flow '99" are presented in this volume. From a physical standpoint, all these systems can be treated as (self)-driven many-particle systems with strong fluctuations, showing multistability, phase transitions, non-linear waves, etc. The great interest in these systems is due to several unexpected new discoveries and their practical relevance for solving some fundamental problems of today's societies. This includes intelligent measures for traffic flow optimization and methods from "econophysics" for stabilizing (stock) markets.

Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2012

Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2012
Author: Ulrich Weidmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business
Total Pages: 1380
Release: 2014-04-23
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3319024477

The 6th International Conference on Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics (PED2012) showcased research on human locomotion. This book presents the proceedings of PED2012. Humans have walked for eons; our drive to settle the globe began with a walk out of Africa. However, much remains to discover. As the world moves toward sustainability while racing to assess and accommodate climate change, research must provide insight on the physical requirements of walking, the dynamics of pedestrians on the move and more. We must understand, predict and simulate pedestrian behaviour, to avoid dangerous situations, to plan for emergencies, and not least, to make walking more attractive and enjoyable. PED2012 offered 70 presentations and keynote talks as well as 70 poster presentations covering new and improved mathematical models, describing new insights on pedestrian behaviour in normal and emergency cases and presenting research based on sensors and advanced observation methods. These papers offer a starting point for innovative new research, building a strong foundation for the next conference and for future research.

Agent-Based Modelling and Geographical Information Systems

Agent-Based Modelling and Geographical Information Systems
Author: Andrew Crooks
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2018-12-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1526454181

This is the era of Big Data and computational social science. It is an era that requires tools which can do more than visualise data but also model the complex relation between data and human action, and interaction. Agent-Based Models (ABM) - computational models which simulate human action and interaction – do just that. This textbook explains how to design and build ABM and how to link the models to Geographical Information Systems. It guides you from the basics through to constructing more complex models which work with data and human behaviour in a spatial context. All of the fundamental concepts are explained and related to practical examples to facilitate learning (with models developed in NetLogo with all code examples available on the accompanying website). You will be able to use these models to develop your own applications and link, where appropriate, to Geographical Information Systems. All of the key ideas and methods are explained in detail: geographical modelling; an introduction to ABM; the fundamentals of Geographical Information Science; why ABM and GIS; using QGIS; designing and building an ABM; calibration and validation; modelling human behavior. An applied primer, that provides fundamental knowledge and practical skills, it will provide you with the skills to build and run your own models, and to begin your own research projects.