Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting
By Ioulia Fenton and Tracey Li*
By now you have probably already noticed that SimPachamama is based on something called Agent-Based Modeling (ABM). And you may very well be scratching your head in confusion, so let us explain.
ABM is the term given to computer models which simulate the behavior of individual ‘agents’. An agent is any entity which can be considered to behave autonomously, assessing its own individual situation and making decisions based on this situation according to a set of rules. If we want to explore the behavior of a single community, then each agent could be an individual person within that community. But it would also work if an agent is a group of people – say an entire village – if we wanted to study the changes in a large geographical region containing several interconnected villages. Deciding whether to treat a single person, a whole community, or even some larger group, as an agent depends on what you want to study. Read More »