Spatial Simulations with Cognitive and Design Agents

Abstract

Agent based design systems could provide useful decision help for architects working on spatial planning tasks that involve large number of actors or deal with complex urban situations.These systems are especially helpful in bridging the gap between concrete design proposals and high-level design abstractions such as frequency and flow diagrams. Every attempt to use computational design agents in the planning process will automatically raise many fundamental issues about spatial perception and representation of the environment. The paper discusses these issues in the light of some recent agent based simulations.Two case studies are presented in order to demonstrate different uses of computational agents in urban design. The first study shows how a simple agent-based design system placed in an urban context becomes a creative production tool.The second one reveals analytical capabilities of an agent system in urban environments.

Agent-based services for the validation and calibration of multi-agent models

“…The main aim of multi-agent models is to explore complex spatio-temporal phenomena, in particular the emergence of macro patterns of behaviour from the micro levels of activity of large number of actors (O'Sullivan & Hacklay, 2000;, often within intricately defined spaces (Puusepp & Coates, 2007). It is this very level of geographical complexity and emergent behaviours that raise methodological challenges in validating multi-agent models (Amblard et al, 2005;Manson, 2007).…”