Juliette Rouchier

Multi-Agent Modelling and Renewable Resources Issues: The Relevance of Shared Representations for Interacting Agents

The issue that is addressed in this paper concerns the way interacting agents should understand their environment so that a common good used by the whole group would last. We synthesise the results of four models with agents interacting in artificial societies in which they have to share a resource. The four societies were built using multi-agent based simulation models that address issues related to the use of common renewable goods. The resources that are used by the artificial communities of agents are of two types: for some, agents must co-ordinate to exploit the resources; for others, the distribution of goods among agents is directly dependent on the distribution of the agents in space. But that classification cannot necessarily hold: the good use of the resources relies on an even distribution of agents in space, but this can be obtained with individual processes in some cases whereas in others it implies coordination too.

Evolution and co-evolution of individuals and groups in environment

To study the social organisation of sets of agents managing common property goods, we use multi-agent simulations. This paper describes how the idea of group is analysed in this context. On the one hand agents build constantly themselves and the community, through their actions on their common environment and their different interactions with others. On the other hand the group preexists to the agents and compels their actions. To move beyond this dualism we explore different ways to take in account both organisation levels at a same time. Two approaches of that idea have been implemented and are presented here. The first, modelling the potlatch, deals with emerging collective structures that are observed by the model user and by the agents themselves. The second, simulating irrigated systems, defines both organisation levels as autonomous agents that coevolve in their environment. A tool was specially created to stick together these two approaches and is described in the discussion.