Swamfest is the annual meeting of the Swarm Development Group (SDG), and one of the oldest communities involved in the development and propagation of agent-based modeling. Swarmfest has traditionally involved a mix of both tool-users and tool-developers, drawn from many domains of expertise. These have included, in the past, computer scientists, software engineers, biomedical researchers, ecologists, economists, political scientists, social scientists, resource management specialists and evolutionary biologists. Swarmfest represents a low-key environment for researchers to explore new ideas and approaches, and benefit from a multi-disciplinary environment. This year Swarmfest will return to its roots, both geographically in Santa Fe, and programmatically by providing a workshop/forum oriented conference structure.
One of the focus areas this year is to examine the range of systems being modeled with ABM, and to start to develop a "taxonomy of complex systems," with the possibility of providing some guidance as to the suitability of the various types of agent-based models for particular types of modeling go
als.
We will also try to identify future avenues for ABM research, including the "next" generation of ABM tools, platforms and application.
Hope to see you in June!
Sincerely,
Gary An
President, Swarm Development Group