GUEST EDITORIAL: BEST OF “AGENT-BASED MODELING AND SIMULATION 2008” (ABMODSIM-2)

The present collection is the result of a thorough, two-step review process applied to a selection of the contributions published in the Proceedings of the 19th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research (Trappl 2008) and discussed at this conference in the symposium on ‘‘Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation’’ (ABModSim-2). The variety of topics and domains addressed is symptomatic for the pervasive adoption of the term ‘‘agent’’ across an ever-growing number of disciplines, research, and application areas, which range from the social sciences to urban planning; biology; logistics; production planning; and many more. These differing disciplines and application domains almost inevitably entail differences regarding the concepts underlying the notion of an agent, just as in the goals of the modeling and simulation activities. Such heterogeneity has naturally led to the definition and development of different approaches,