A multi-agent model system for land-use change simulation

Authored by Celia G. Ralha, Carolina G Abreu, Cassio G. C. Coelho, Alexandre Zaghetto, Bruno Macchiavello, Ricardo B. Machado

Date Published: 2013-04

DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2012.12.003

Sponsors: Brazilian Ministry of Education (CAPES)

Platforms: Java Agent Development Environment (JADE)

Model Documentation: ODD Flow charts Mathematical description

Model Code URLs: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mase-unb/

Abstract

This paper presents a multi-agent model system to characterize land-use change dynamics. The replicable parameterization process should be useful to the development of simulation frameworks, important to environmental policy makers to analyze different scenarios during decision making process. The methodological two-fold approach intends to form a solid backbone based on: (i) the systematic and structured empirical characterization of the model; and (ii) the conceptual structure definition according to the agent-based model documentation protocol - Overview, Design concepts and Details. A multi-agent system for land-use change simulation was developed to validate the model, which is illustrated with a case study of the Brazilian Cerrado using LANDSAT ETM images. The simulation results prove the model importance with a figure of merit greater than 50%, what means the amount of correctly predicted change is larger than the sum of any type of error. The results are very good compared with nine popular peer-reviewed land change models. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tags

Agent-based model Multi-agent system Brazilian Cerrado Environmental simulation MASE Model description