REACTIVE AND DELIBERATIVE AGENTS APPLIED TO SIMULATION OF SOCIO-ECONOMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

An important open issue in the Agent Based Simulation field is the lack of an univocal definition of the term “agent” and of the paradigms and methodology used to build models; in software-engineering, a system of independent programs is considered a multi-agent system, although there is no clarity about what the term exactly defines. The term “agent”, deriving from the Latin “agens”, identifies someone (or something) who acts; the same word can also be used to define a mean through which some action is made or caused. The term is used in many different fields and disciplines, such as economics, physics, natural sciences, sociology and many others. In this paper an overview of different kinds of agents, that could all be applied to simulation of complex systems, will be presented; in particular, some practical examples will be given of models pertaining Game Theory, Biology and Social Organizations. The innovative contribution of the article is the use of declared agent paradigms, derived from computer science and Artificial Intelligence, for simulating complex systems.

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