[OGRUG] Multi-agent modeling including geospatial data

[Paul Gilbert]

R has several useful tools for dealing with and plotting geospatial 
data. There may be speed considerations around data extraction, local 
calculation or server, network speed, etc, as been discussed in the 
"Interactive geospatial data with Leaflet ..." thread. Specific code 
examples can make it a bit easier to focus on speed issues.

On the other part of Joseph's question, regarding multi-agent modelling, 
I am not aware of good solutions in R. (That does not mean they don't 
exist and I would be interested to hear if anyone knows of something.) 
Multi-agent modelling covers a lot of things and this is not my field, 
but in the examples I have seen there are two sorts of problems that 
make R less than ideal. The first is that the problems do not easily 
"vectorize", which means speed is a problem. Typically, even with 
compiled languages, speed is an issue for these models and people are 
looking toward multi-core, cluster, or GPU processing. The second is the 
need for a "language" to define the model. These languages tend to be 
somewhat specialized to the problem domain. Once you decide on a 
language to define the model, the underlying computer language for doing 
the computation is largely hidden.

My approach to this would be to first consider the many already defined 
languages for multi-agent modelling (see e.g. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_agent-based_modeling_software), 
and then look at whether an interface from R to one of these would be 
useful for doing plotting, summary statistics, etc, with the existing 
modelling software handling the main computation. I have done this sort 
of thing with some econometric modelling software and it can be 
relatively simple. R is fairly good at interfacing to other things.

Paul

On 05/27/2014 07:00 AM, Amin Adatia wrote:
> I am interested in this as well. The kind of plot I looking to build
> is for distribution of Health Effects (Disease, Mortality, etc) at
> Locations and with a Time spread so we can see the progress or lack
> thereof in the application of Health Services; For example, Cancer
> Incidences over time and at various locations. This to perhaps
> identify the effect of the environment and/or Treatments.
>
>
> Regards Amin Adatia KnowTech Solutions Inc ( http://knowtech.ca )
> Mobile +1-613-864-8378
>
>> --Forwarded Message Attachment-- From: jpotvin at opman.ca To:
>> r-ug-ottawa at r-project.org Date: Mon, 26 May 2014 10:36:49 -0400
>> Subject: [OGRUG] Multi-agent modeling including geospatial data
>>
>> I am currently planning a multi-agent model that will include
>> geospatial input and output data. I have not done this before and
>> would be interested in some orientation from someone who is
>> experienced with the appropriate R packages.
>>
>> -- Joseph Potvin
>> jpotvin at opman.ca
>>