Multiscale MAS modeling to simulate complex systems: A case study in soil science

The MicrObEs project is a pluridisciplinary project, which associates computer scientists and biologists. Its main objective is to simulate soil functioning by using an agent-based model. It intends to model earthworms, their physical environment and their impact on soil (soil structure modification, organic matter dynamics and micro-organism activities). Creating a model of an ecosystem leads to complexity problems. A soil is a multi-scale heterogeneous, three dimensional and dynamic environment, which is difficult to model. An approach based on fractal theory (often used in soil sciences) was chosen to model such a real complex environment; it was integrated into a Multi-Agent System (MAS). MAS allows to simulate situated agents in an virtual world. The originality of this present MAS is that it is based on a dynamic environment which builds itself, on demand, according to an abstract canvas tree and agent motions. The aim of this paper is to present this approach and its originality. A theoretical view of the approach is given and applied to a case study: the Lamto’s soil

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