Complexity and Ecosystem Management: The Theory and Practice of Multi-agent Systems

Complexity and Ecosystem Management: The Theory and Practice of Multi-agent Systems
ISBN-10
178195724X
ISBN-13
9781781957240
Category
Business & Economics
Pages
366
Language
English
Published
2002-01-01
Publisher
Edward Elgar Publishing
Author
Marco Janssen

Description

The quality of ecosystems is affected by the actions of different stakeholders who use them in a variety of ways. In order to understand this complex relationship between humans and nature, it is vital to understand the complexity of the interacting agents. The authors in this book attempt to do this by applying multi-agent systems to the problems of ecosystem management. The multi-agent approach to ecosystem management is a relatively new and rapidly developing field which takes a formal computational approach towards the interaction of humans with their environment. The authors highlight some of the promising new methodologies which are emerging in the field from disciplines such as computer science and computational social science. They move on to address a number of important topics including diffusion processes, common-pool resources, land use change and the participatory use of models, in an attempt to solve contemporary management issues. They clearly demonstrate the potential utility of multi-agent systems in the context of theoretical problems and practical case studies.

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