The Unintended Consequences of Unintended Consequences

In 2003, as part of a project to document coastal erosion in California, the following photo was posted on the californiacoastline.org website.  It is a picture of a beach, some cliffs, lots of trees, and a rather nice house complete with swimming pool, that turns out to be the home of one Barbara Streisand. For those not …

Simulating (Human) Behavior Session at IFORS Conference in Quebec

I am organizing a session at IFORS on Simulating (Human) Behavior as part of a Behavioural Operational Research stream. It would be good if other agent-based models could be presented. To submit a paper, please do so here: http://ifors2017.ca/submit-abstract and use invitation code dfa90f58

Review of ‘Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation’, OR Essentials

Book review to be published in The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS) Taylor, Simon J. E. (Ed.) (2014) Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation, OR Society and Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke   Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation is the first in the Operational Research Society’s OR Essentials series.   OR Essentials brings together multidisicpinary research from the management, …

Building the Multiplex: An Agent-Based Model of Formal and Informal Network Relations

This presentation from the EURO 2016 conference in Poznan, Poland, and from the GDN conference in Bellingham, WA, USA, joint work with Leroy White of Warwick Business School, shows how combining formal and informal organizational networks enables decisions to flow more freely around organizations, but at a cost, leading to an optimal size of informal …

What proportion of an airline ticket is made up of the cost of the aeroplane?

Aircraft aren’t cheap.  Neither are airline tickets.  But how much of that airline ticket is made up of the cost of the aeroplane? If we assume a relatively efficient modern airliner, say a 777, a 30-year lifetime, 3500 hours per year, and an average speed of 500mph, that produces a  total distance of 52,500,000 miles.  Which is …

Stacking Shelves the Amazon way

Amazon FC are playing in the Euros (the UEFA football championship).  Or at least that’s what could be inferred from my name badge. In fact, Amazon FC is one of the Amazon fulfilment centres, located in the Polish town of Poznań, location of the 28th European conference on Operational Research. The fulfilment centre is huge – with a …

Agent-Based Modeling and Behavioral Operational Research

Behavioral Operational Research: Theory, Methodology and Practice (Martin Kunc, Jonathan Malpass, Leroy Wright, Eds.) was published by Palgrave Macmillan in September 2016.  My chapter on Agent-Based Modeling and Behavioral Operational Research shows the great potential of using agent-based simulation within BOR, showing how example models can be applied to the field.  More details of the chapter can be found on the …