Tools of the Trade: A Survey of Various Agent Based Modeling Platforms

Agent Based Modeling (ABM) toolkits are as diverse as the community of people who use them. With so many toolkits available, the choice of which one is best suited for a project is left to word of mouth, past experiences in using particular toolkits and toolkit publicity. This is especially troublesome for projects that require specialization. Rather than using toolkits that are the most publicized but are designed for general projects, using this paper, one will be able to choose a toolkit that already exists and that may be built especially for one's particular domain and specialized needs. In this paper, we examine the entire continuum of agent based toolkits. We characterize each based on 5 important characteristics users consider when choosing a toolkit, and then we categorize the characteristics into user-friendly taxonomies that aid in rapid indexing and easy reference.Agent Based Modeling, Individual Based Model, Multi Agent Systems

Evaluation of anthropomorphic feedback for an online auction and affordances

This paper describes an experiment investigating the effectiveness and user satisfaction of using anthropomorphic feedback at the user interface. The context chosen was online bidding due to this kind of activity being very much used in current times by general users. The main results of the experiment were that there was a statistically significant effect observed for the time taken to place a bid in the anthropomorphic text condition. However there were no other significant effects for effectiveness issues and user satisfaction indicators. The results were also analysed in terms of the affordances and the main findings were that each of the four conditions tested in the experiment were probably equivalent in terms of their facilitating the affordances. Overall it may be more important to facilitate the affordances rather than a type of feedback being anthropomorphic in nature or not

Methods and Tools for the Microsimulation and Forecasting of Household Expenditure - A Review

This paper reviews potential methods and tools for the microsimulation and forecasting of household expenditure. It begins with a discussion of a range of approaches to the forecasting of household populations via agent-based modelling tools. Then it evaluates approaches to the modelling of household expenditure. A prototype implementation is described and the paper concludes with an outline of an approach to be pursued in future work

Methods and Tools for the Microsimulation and Forecasting of Household Expenditure

This paper reviews potential methods and tools for the microsimulation and forecasting of household expenditure. It begins with a discussion of a range of approaches to the forecasting of household populations via agent-based modelling tools. Then it evaluates approaches to the modelling of household expenditure. A prototype implementation is described and the paper concludes with an outline of an approach to be pursued in future work

Knowledge Discovery in the SCADA Databases Used for the Municipal Power Supply System

This scientific paper delves into the problems related to the develop-ment of intellectual data analysis system that could support decision making to manage municipal power supply services. The management problems of mu-nicipal power supply system have been specified taking into consideration modern tendencies shown by new technologies that allow for an increase in the energy efficiency. The analysis findings of the system problems related to the integrated computer-aided control of the power supply for the city have been given. The consideration was given to the hierarchy-level management decom-position model. The objective task targeted at an increase in the energy effi-ciency to minimize expenditures and energy losses during the generation and transportation of energy carriers to the Consumer, the optimization of power consumption at the prescribed level of the reliability of pipelines and networks and the satisfaction of Consumers has been defined. To optimize the support of the decision making a new approach to the monitoring of engineering systems and technological processes related to the energy consumption and transporta-tion using the technologies of geospatial analysis and Knowledge Discovery in databases (KDD) has been proposed. The data acquisition for analytical prob-lems is realized in the wireless heterogeneous medium, which includes soft-touch VPN segments of ZigBee technology realizing the 6LoWPAN standard over the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and also the segments of the networks of cellu-lar communications. JBoss Application Server is used as a server-based plat-form for the operation of the tools used for the retrieval of data collected from sensor nodes, PLC and energy consumption record devices. The KDD tools are developed using Java Enterprise Edition platform and Spring and ORM Hiber-nate technologies

Confronting objections to performance pay: A study of the impact of individual and gain-sharing incentives on the job satisfaction of British employees

The increasing interest in incentive pay schemes in recent years has raised concerns regarding their potential damaging effect on intrinsic job satisfaction, or the security of employment. This study explores the impact of both individual and gain-sharing incentives on the overall job satisfaction of workers in the UK, as well as their satisfaction with various facets of jobs, namely total pay, job security, and the actual work itself. Using data from six waves (1998-2003) of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), and after correcting for the sorting problem that arises, no significant difference in overall job utility is found between those receiving performance-related pay (PRP) and those on other methods of compensation. In addition, non-economic arguments that PRP crowds-out the intrinsic satisfaction of jobs are also not supported, as are popular concerns regarding the adverse impact of PRP schemes on job security. An important asymmetry in the manner in which individual and gain-sharing incentives affect the utility of employees is nonetheless unearthed, as the latter are consistently found to have a positive effect on employee well-being

Global Grids and Software Toolkits: A Study of Four Grid Middleware Technologies

Grid is an infrastructure that involves the integrated and collaborative use of computers, networks, databases and scientific instruments owned and managed by multiple organizations. Grid applications often involve large amounts of data and/or computing resources that require secure resource sharing across organizational boundaries. This makes Grid application management and deployment a complex undertaking. Grid middlewares provide users with seamless computing ability and uniform access to resources in the heterogeneous Grid environment. Several software toolkits and systems have been developed, most of which are results of academic research projects, all over the world. This chapter will focus on four of these middlewares--UNICORE, Globus, Legion and Gridbus. It also presents our implementation of a resource broker for UNICORE as this functionality was not supported in it. A comparison of these systems on the basis of the architecture, implementation model and several other features is included.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure