10.8) Conclusion

The aim of this part was to take you from using NetLogo only for simple animations to doing agent-based science, but of course we made only a few first steps: modelling a system of multiple agents, adding quantitative observations that we can analyse, starting to use simulation experiments, and using more realistic agent behaviour algorithms.

The PV diffusion model is comparably simple, but it already requires some difficult decisions - for example, what output measures should we observe and what adoption patterns emerge from different levels of complexity in agent behaviours. It is thus important that you learn how to analyse simple models before you turn to more complex ones.

Although the PV diffusion model is good to start with as people from different disciplines can understand it, it does not include agent movements, which is often used in ABM. But the basic techniques you learned about agents that interact without moving, can be used to move agent through landscapes (with a little help from the dictionary). The same techniques and code can be used to model very different kinds of agents (animals, people, organizations, ...) moving through many kinds of “space” (political or economic landscapes, social networks, etc.).