Brownian Agents and Active Particles - Collective Dynamics in the Natural and Social Sciences

"This book lays out a vision for a coherent framework for understanding complex systems" (from the foreword by J. Doyne Farmer). By developing the genuine idea of Brownian agents, the author combines concepts from informatics, such as multi-agent systems, with approaches of statistical many-particle physics. This way, an efficient method for computer simulations of complex systems is developed which is also accessible to analytical investigations and quantitative predictions. The book demonstrates that Brownian agent models can be successfully applied in many different contexts, ranging from physicochemical pattern formation, to active motion and swarming in biological systems, to self-assembling of net-works, evolutionary optimization, urban growth, economic agglomeration and even social systems.