In 2005, we published Individual-based
Modeling and Ecology, a monograph intended to provide
conceptual and theoretical foundations for the use of individual-based
simulation in one scientific field, ecology. While that book has been
used in several university courses (including some for non-ecologists),
it was not designed as a textbook and it provides little help with one
of the most difficult challenges: learning to program individual-based
and agent-based models. In fact, at the time we wrote Individual-based
Modeling and Ecology we could not offer clear guidance on what
software platform was best for beginners to use.
Now, NetLogo
is clearly fantastic software for scientists and students to use as
they learn agent-based modeling. Uri Wilensky, Seth Tisue, and their
colleagues at Northwestern
University's Center for Connected Learning have produced an
incredibly powerful and easy-to-use platform. Their development of
NetLogo into a tool for science as well as education made it easy for
us to write a textbook that moves students through programming and into
modeling and scientific analysis.
We designed this book to fill the need for an introductory text on
agent-based modeling for scientists, for use both in university courses
(graduate or upper level undergraduate) and by people teaching
themselves. The book is not specific to any particular field of
science; instead, we intend it to be useful in fields ranging from
social and economic sciences to the natural and biological sciences –
any field in which systems of unique, behaving, and interacting
entities are of interest.
The book concentrates on four general topics: