Multiagent simulation

Abstract

How can we predict ICT-driven innovations that will emerge in society and daily life? Multiagent simulations can be used to predict the changes in society and daily life caused by human interaction with new technologies. Multiagent simulations have become increasingly popular as a type of micro-simulation that can represent diversity and heterogeneity of human behaviors. In contrast to traditional micro-simulations, multiagent simulations can represent individual decision-making in detail, so they can reproduce the complex phenomena that arise from the outcome of interactions between different agents. In this chapter, we introduce three cases where multiagent simulations are used to reproduce and analyze complex collective behavior; evacuation simulation, traffic simulation, and economic simulation. Furthermore, we discuss the participatory approach for realizing practical and reliable multiagent simulations.