Computational simulation of research groups at Costa Rican Distance Education University

Computational simulation of research groups at Costa Rican Distance Education University

Authors

  • Andrés Segura-Castillo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22458/urj.v1i2.229

Keywords:

Social simulation, research groups, multiagent systems, social network analysis.

Abstract

Computational simulation of research groups at Costa Rican Distance Education University. Social network analysis deals with quantitative studies of human groups and has established a set of measurements to understand their structure and behaviour. Nevertheless, their dynamism is only expressed to a limited extend and multiagent modeling and simulation has become a complementary analytical method. It enables researchers to simulate human interactions on virtual environments and to discover emergent patterns of behavior. This article presents a multiagent system that models and simulates the dynamics of research groups at the Costa Rican Distance Education University. The results of a first scenario point out that the initial amount of available resources in the system does not have a causal relationship with the clustering coefficient, i.e the metric used to measure the reseachers’ tendency to form groups. The concept of resource must be reconsidered to include infrastructure and equipment availability. A second scenario shows that as the number of researchers increases, the clustering coefficient decreases. This effect is atributed to a tendency to equilibrium in the relative costs and benefits of maintaining a given number of researchers. More variables are needed for a reliable simulation. 

References

Burger, M.J. 2009. Social context and network formation: An experimental study, Social Networks 31: 63-75.

Carley, K. M. & L. Gasser. 1999, Computational Organization Theory en Weiss, G. (Ed.), Multiagent Systems: a Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Estados Unidos.

Fortino, G., A. Garro & W. Russo. 2006. From modeling to enactment of distributed workflows: an agent-based approach, Proceedings of the 21st ACM Symposium on Applied Computing SAC’06: 128 (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1141277.1141306; consultado 10 de junio 2009).

Gilbert, N. 2008. Agent-based Models, ser. Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences 153, SAGE Publications, Londres, Inglaterra.

Gilbert, N. & K.G. Troitzsch. 2005. Simulation for the Social Scientist, Open University McGraw Hill Education, Berkshire, Inglaterra.

Hudlicka, E. & G. Zacharias. 2004. Approaches for modeling individuals within organizational simulations, Proceedings of the 36th Winter Simulation Conference WSC’04:903-911 (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1161901; consultado 21 de agosto 2009).

Knoke, D. & S. Yang. 2008. Social Network Analysis, ser. Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences 154, SAGE Publications, Londres, Inglaterra.

Lees, M., B. Logan & G. Theodoropoulus. 2007. Distributed Simulations of Agent-Based Systems with HLA, ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computation 17.

Louie, M.A. & K.M. Carley. 2008. Balancing the criticisms: Validating multi-agent models of social systems, Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 16: 242-256.

Oprea, M. 2004. Applications of Multi-Agent Systems, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing: Information Technology, Springer, Boston, Estados Unidos.

REPAST. 2009. Recursive Porous Agent Simulation Toolkit (http://repast.sourceforge.net/; consultado 1 de marzo 2009)

Troitzsch, K. 2009. Perspectives and challenges of agent-based simulation as a tool for economics and other social sciences, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems AAMAS 2009: 35-42, International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Richland, Carolina del Sur, Estados Unidos.

Watts, D.J. & S. Strogatz. 1998. Collective dynamics of “small world” networks, Nature 393.

Published

2009-12-01

How to Cite

Segura-Castillo, A. (2009). Computational simulation of research groups at Costa Rican Distance Education University. UNED Research Journal, 1(2), 163–170. https://doi.org/10.22458/urj.v1i2.229

Issue

Section

Articles
Loading...