The Intersection of Agent Based Models and Fuzzy Cognitive Maps: A Review of an Emerging Hybrid Modeling Practice

摘要

Agent Based Modeling (ABMs) and Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) are complementary modeling techniques: the former represents interacting agents across a landscape over time but does not specify how to encapsulate subjective behaviors in agents, whereas the latter can model a subjective behavior but lacks the ability to scale it to a population or do it over time. These techniques are increasingly used together, particularly as hybrid models. We propose the first review of this emerging practice and identified 31 articles that combined the two techniques. Our analysis revealed three different high-level architectures to structure the combined use of ABMs and FCMs, such as using an interface or embedding an FCM into each agent. Our review provides a snapshot of an emerging field, thus assembling the evidence-base to identify potential areas for future work, such as consolidating and standardizing software development efforts in a currently fragmented field.