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RESEARCH PRODUCT

MAS Simulation of a “Bush Taxi” Transportation Service : Summary of a project carried out during the MAPS training course

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The human and social sciences have always sought to improve their tools and resources in order to spread their knowledge. The most recent of these tools, Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), also known as Agent-Based Models (ABM), is a remarkable means of formalization and visualization of spatial processes. Multi-Agent Systems have already proved to be extremely useful modeling tools in various disciplines such as epidemiology, biology, and ecology, but also economics and geography (Amblard F. 2006). Today's research and methods aiming to deal with spatial problems are more and more treated within the paradigm and theories of complex systems. Indeed, one of the advantages of multi-agent systems, in the domain of human and social sciences, is their ability to accurately represent the underlying systems in the simplest way possible, while at the same time successfully integrating complexity in each of the scales considered (Daudé E. 2003). The main problem, when using this approach, is to design, in accordance with Occam's Razor, simple operating rules and strategies for the agents, which are carefully chosen to respond to a clearly identified problem. Given the components and parameters of the system, this tool allows us to observe and understand the comprehensive self-organized behavior, including the effects of structuring, transition, emergence, etc. (M. Vidal J. 2007). Today's society is increasingly mobile and people's daily mobility is determined by processes linked to their behavior, the infrastructure, and their environment (roads, etc.), but also by the services available to them (busses, taxis, etc.) (Marilleau N. et al. 2005). Therefore, their movements are strongly influenced by the environment which surrounds them. Working on a variety of themes which are all relevant to the same problem, mobility, our group has brought together several young researchers for whom the MAPS training course fulfills the need for training in the domain of the science of complexity, in the realms of both methodological skills and practical multi-agent modeling.