17 - Nature-inspired Coordination for Complex Distributed Systems

Originating from closed parallel systems, coordination models and technologies gained in expressive power so to deal with open distributed systems. In particular, nature-inspired models of coordination emerged in the last decade as the most effective approaches to tackle the complexity of pervasive, intelligent, and self-* systems. In this talk we survey the most relevant nature-inspired coordination models, discuss the main open issues, and explore the trends for their future development

Modeling Environmental Operative Elements in Agent-Based Pedestrian Simulation

Models for pedestrian simulation are employed on a day-to-day basis for supporting the design and planning of the built environment in normal and evacuation situations. One of the aspects that are least investigated in the community, probably because it is considered closer to technology transfer than to research, is the modelling of operational elements of the simulated environment. The present paper briefly describes an agent-based approach to the representation of operative elements of the environment with particular attention to the mechanisms of interaction between these active objects and pedestrians