This book introduces the companion modelling approach by presenting the stance that underpins it, the methods and tools used with stakeholders and the specific role of models during the process. It addresses the means to deal with the different levels of decision-making and to take into account the various power relationships. It proposes a methodology to assess the impact of the approach on the stakeholders involved in the process. The book includes 27 case studies and 7 teaching tools that describe the successful use of the approach in a variety of settings or teaching contexts. It is intended for researchers working on rural development or renewable resources management, as well as students and teachers.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Agent-Based Modelling and Landscape Change" that was published in Land

This volume presents revised versions of the papers presented at the 4th International Workshop on Multi-agent Based Simulation (MABS 2003), a workshop federated with the2ndInternationalJointConferenceonAutonomousAgentsandMulti-agentSystems (AAMAS 2003), which was held in Melbourne, Australia, in July 2003. In addition to the papers presented at the workshop, three additional papers have been included in this volume (Robertson, Noto et al., and Marietto et al.). Multiagent Based Simulation (MABS) is a vibrant interdisciplinary area which brings together researchers active within the agent-based social simulation community (ABSS) and the multiagent systems community (MAS). These two communities have different, indeed somewhat divergent, goals. The focus of ABSS is on simulating and synthesizing social behaviors in order to understand observed social systems (human, animal and even electronic) via the development and testing of new models and c- cepts. MAS focuses instead on the solution of hard engineering problems related to the construction, deployment and ef?cient operation of multiagent-based systems.

Effective participatory water management requires effective co-engineering – the collective process whereby organisational decisions are made on how to bring stakeholders together. This trans-disciplinary book highlights the challenges involved in the collective initiation, design, implementation and evaluation of water planning and management processes. It demonstrates how successful management requires the effective handling of two participatory processes: the stakeholder water management process and the co-engineering process required to organise this. The book provides practical methods for supporting improved participatory processes, including the application of theory and models to aid decision-making. International case studies of these applications from Australia, Europe and all over the world, including Africa, are used to examine negotiations and leadership approaches, and their effects on the participatory stakeholder processes. This international review of participatory water governance forms an important resource for academic researchers in hydrology, environmental management and water policy, and also practitioners and policy-makers working in water management.

Growth models are among the core methods for analyzing how and when people change. Discussing both structural equation and multilevel modeling approaches, this book leads readers step by step through applying each model to longitudinal data to answer particular research questions. It demonstrates cutting-edge ways to describe linear and nonlinear change patterns, examine within-person and between-person differences in change, study change in latent variables, identify leading and lagging indicators of change, evaluate co-occurring patterns of change across multiple variables, and more. User-friendly features include real data examples, code (for Mplus or NLMIXED in SAS, and OpenMx or nlme in R), discussion of the output, and interpretation of each model's results. User-Friendly Features *Real, worked-through longitudinal data examples serving as illustrations in each chapter. *Script boxes that provide code for fitting the models to example data and facilitate application to the reader's own data. *"Important Considerations" sections offering caveats, warnings, and recommendations for the use of specific models. *Companion website supplying datasets and syntax for the book's examples, along with additional code in SAS/R for linear mixed-effects modeling.

"This book, a reference survey of social simulation work comprehensively collects the most exciting developments in the field. Drawing research contributions from a vibrant community of experts on social simulation, it provides a set of unique and innovative approaches, ranging from agent-based modeling to empirically based simulations, as well as applications in business, governmental, scientific, and other contexts"--Provided by publisher.

Using the investigation of criminal culture as an example application, this edited volume presents a novel approach to agent-based simulation: interpretive agent-based social simulation as a methodological and transdisciplinary approach to examining the potential of qualitative data and methods for agent-based modelling (ABM). Featuring updated articles as well as original chapters which provide a cohesive and novel approach to the digital humanities, the book challenges the common conviction that hermeneutics and simulation are two mutually exclusive ways to understand and explain human behaviour and social change. Exploring how methodology benefits from taking cultural complexities into account and bringing these methods together in an innovative combination of qualitative-hermeneutic and digital techniques, the book unites experts in the field to connect ABM to narrative theories, thereby providing a novel tool for cultural studies. An innovative methodological contribution to narrative theory, this volume will be of primary benefit to researchers, scholars, and academics in the fields of ABM, hermeneutics, and criminology. The book will also appeal to those working in policing, security, and forensic consultation.