70,327 research outputs found
EVALUATING EVOLUTIONARY MECHANISMS BY SIMULATION
ABSTRACT A three year research project is investigating evolutionary processes in electronic markets. Three fundamental evolutionary mechanisms are innovation, imitation and improvement of existing procedures. As part of the initial investigation, simulation experiments have been performed to investigate the relative impact and cost of these three evolutionary mechanisms. The design of those simulation experiments is described here together with a description of the implementation and some preliminary results. The simulation was implemented in Java and is available over the Internet as an applet. The experiments are based on a relative demand function that peaks early and then tends to zero over time. So the markets to which these results apply are those in which fashion and 'fad' are significant factors, such as the market for electronic goods
Short versus long term benefits and the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game
In this paper I investigate the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma when individuals change their strategies subject to performance evaluation of their neighbours over variable time horizons. In the monochrome setting, in which all agents per default share the same performance evaluation rule, weighing past events strongly dramatically enhances the prevalence of cooperators. For co-evolutionary models, in which evaluation time horizons and strategies can co-evolve, I demonstrate that cooperation naturally associates with long-term evaluation of others while defection is typically paired with very short time horizons. Moreover, considering the continuous spectrum in between enhanced and discounted weights of past performance, cooperation is optimally supported when cooperators neither give enhanced weight to past nor more recent events, but simply average payoffs. Payoff averaging is also found to emerge as the dominant strategy for cooperators in co-evolutionary models, thus proposing a natural route to the evolution of cooperation in viscous populations
Half a billion simulations: evolutionary algorithms and distributed computing for calibrating the SimpopLocal geographical model
Multi-agent geographical models integrate very large numbers of spatial
interactions. In order to validate those models large amount of computing is
necessary for their simulation and calibration. Here a new data processing
chain including an automated calibration procedure is experimented on a
computational grid using evolutionary algorithms. This is applied for the first
time to a geographical model designed to simulate the evolution of an early
urban settlement system. The method enables us to reduce the computing time and
provides robust results. Using this method, we identify several parameter
settings that minimise three objective functions that quantify how closely the
model results match a reference pattern. As the values of each parameter in
different settings are very close, this estimation considerably reduces the
initial possible domain of variation of the parameters. The model is thus a
useful tool for further multiple applications on empirical historical
situations
Digital Ecosystems: Ecosystem-Oriented Architectures
We view Digital Ecosystems to be the digital counterparts of biological
ecosystems. Here, we are concerned with the creation of these Digital
Ecosystems, exploiting the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems
to evolve high-level software applications. Therefore, we created the Digital
Ecosystem, a novel optimisation technique inspired by biological ecosystems,
where the optimisation works at two levels: a first optimisation, migration of
agents which are distributed in a decentralised peer-to-peer network, operating
continuously in time; this process feeds a second optimisation based on
evolutionary computing that operates locally on single peers and is aimed at
finding solutions to satisfy locally relevant constraints. The Digital
Ecosystem was then measured experimentally through simulations, with measures
originating from theoretical ecology, evaluating its likeness to biological
ecosystems. This included its responsiveness to requests for applications from
the user base, as a measure of the ecological succession (ecosystem maturity).
Overall, we have advanced the understanding of Digital Ecosystems, creating
Ecosystem-Oriented Architectures where the word ecosystem is more than just a
metaphor.Comment: 39 pages, 26 figures, journa
Biology of Applied Digital Ecosystems
A primary motivation for our research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to
exploit the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems. Ecosystems are
thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve
complex, dynamic problems. However, the biological processes that contribute to
these properties have not been made explicit in Digital Ecosystems research.
Here, we discuss how biological properties contribute to the self-organising
features of biological ecosystems, including population dynamics, evolution, a
complex dynamic environment, and spatial distributions for generating local
interactions. The potential for exploiting these properties in artificial
systems is then considered. We suggest that several key features of biological
ecosystems have not been fully explored in existing digital ecosystems, and
discuss how mimicking these features may assist in developing robust, scalable
self-organising architectures. An example architecture, the Digital Ecosystem,
is considered in detail. The Digital Ecosystem is then measured experimentally
through simulations, with measures originating from theoretical ecology, to
confirm its likeness to a biological ecosystem. Including the responsiveness to
requests for applications from the user base, as a measure of the 'ecological
succession' (development).Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure, conferenc
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