Loughborough University Institutional Repository Agent-based modeling and behavioral operational research

This chapter sets out agent-based modelling as a promising methodology for behavioural operational research. We set out the links between existing modelling techniques such as system dynamics and discrete event simulation, and offer examples of how agent-based models can be used to model the behavior of individuals. We show how existing system-level models can be ‘agentized’ so that system-level behavior is modelled by the interactions of individual agents. This focus on the individuals in the system rather than the system itself opens up a rich prospectus for the use of agent-based modelling within behavioural operational research. BIOGRAPHY Dr Duncan Robertson is a member of the management sciences and operations management group at Loughborough University, previously having worked at Warwick Business School, Manchester Business School, Sun Yat-sen University, and was a researcher at The Wharton School. He is a Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Before undertaking his DPhil at Saïd Business School, he qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG. He originally trained as a physicist at Imperial College London.