Swarm is an open-source

agent-based model An agent-based model (ABM) is a computational model for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents (both individual or collective entities such as organizations or groups) in order to understand the behavior of a system and ...

ing simulation package, useful for simulating the interaction of

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuran ...

s (social or biological) and their emergent collective behavior. Swarm was initially developed at the

Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, inc ...

in the mid-1990s, and since 1999 has been maintained by the non-profit

Swarm Development Group The Swarm Development Group (SDG) is an American non-profit organization to advance the development of complex adaptive system-oriented agent-based modeling (ABM) tools initiated at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, US. Histor ...

. Also known as the Swarm Simulation System, it is available for free and use, covered by the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

.GNU General Public License
/ref> Early development work on Swarm was completed by Chris Langton (SFI), Roger Burkhart (John Deere), Nelson Minar (SFI), Manor Askenazi (SFI), Glen Ropella (SFI), Marcus Daniels (SFI), and Alex Lancaster (SFI). Since that time, many hundreds of people around the world have contributed to the continued open source development of the suite of Swarm ABM tools.

Applications

Scientific applications

Agent-based modeling seeks to replicate these complexities and adaptations in computational environments where these interactive

emergent behavior In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole. Emergence plays a central role ...

s can be analyzed multi-dimensionally. By defining and assigning agencies reflective of prescribed behaviors, known or estimated, to active software agents in a

computer simulation Computer simulation is the running of a mathematical model on a computer, the model being designed to represent the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be determin ...

, scientists can approximate experimental results not possible in natural temporal frameworks. Swarm and other agent-based modeling platforms afford scientists the opportunity to conduct and visualize experiments in these synthetic macro and microenvironments for testing scientific theories, natural data sets, and other analyses while free of pressing constraints like time, volume, hazards, or many other parameters.

Commercial applications

Agent-based models have been used since the mid-1990s to solve a variety of business and technology problems. Examples of applications include: *

supply chain optimization Supply-chain optimization (SCO) aims to ensure the optimal operation of a manufacturing and distribution supply chain. This includes the optimal placement of inventory within the supply chain, minimizing operating costs including manufacturing co ...

and

logistics Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the Consumption (economics), point of consumption according to the ...

; * modeling of

consumer behavior Consumer behaviour is the study of individuals, groups, or organisations and all activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services. It encompasses how the consumer's emotions, attitudes, and preferences affe ...

, including

word of mouth Word of mouth is the passing of information from person to person using oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others a ...

and

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

effects; *

distributed computing Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers. The components of a distributed system commu ...

; *

workforce management Workforce management (WFM) is an institutional process that maximizes performance levels and competency for an organization. The process includes all the activities needed to maintain a productive workforce, such as field service management, human ...

; *

traffic management Traffic management is a key branch within logistics. It concerns the planning, control and purchasing of transport services needed to physically move vehicles (for example aircraft, road vehicles, rolling stock and watercraft) and freight. Tr ...

; and * portfolio management. In these and other applications, the system of interest is simulated by capturing the behavior of individual agents and their interconnections. Agent-based modeling tools can be used to test how changes in individual behaviors will affect the overall, emergent system behavior.

References

External links

Swarm Homepage
{{collective animal behaviour Agent-based model Scientific simulation software Emergence

Applications

Scientific applications

Commercial applications

See also

References

External links