Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell (1996), Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up. Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press.

Growing Artificial Societies is an early collection of agent-based models where complex aggregate behavior is derived from the interactions of simple agents. It is one the most influential implementations of agent-based modeling in social science.

This page collects and makes any computer code publicly available, that implements, re-interprets and applies the models of Growing Artificial Societies. Please feel free to contribute by sending your code to:

1. For many years the original code has not been available at the site of The Brookings Institution. However, Luc Girardin included an early Ascape version of Sugarscape in a collection of Computational Models of Social Systems. If you wish to modify the code, Valeria Baldelli contributed the following tips:

   • Download the above code in Eclipse workspace;
   • Add the following external archives: QTJava.zip and collections.zip from workspace/Ascape/lib;
   • Create a package "edu.brook.sugarscape" in "src";
   • Copy the source code in this package and make your modifications;
   • Delete the old "edu.brook.sugarscape" from "ascape.models.jar";
   • Run your project with main class edu.brook.ascape.model.Scape.

 

2. Francois Bousquet reproduced the models of Growing Artificial Societies within the CORMAS project.

 

3. Some of the models of Growing Artificial Societies has been reproduced on the NetLogo platform. Several models are available:

   • The Sugarscape 1: Immediate Growback model by Uri Wilenski;
   • The Sugarscape 2: Constant Growback model by Uri Wilenski;
   • The Sugarscape 3: Wealth Distribution model by Uri Wilenski;
   • The Sugarscape model by Iain Weaver;
   • The Sugarscape model by Owen Densmore.

 

4. A. Kannankeril is leading an open-source project for translating the models of Growing Artificial Societies in Java. Visit the project Growing Artificial Societies: Sugarscape.

 

5. Tony Bigbee implemented Epstein and Axtell's Sugarscape on MASON. Please visit MASON Sugarscape.

 

6. Miles Parker took up again the development of Ascape. Please visit ASCAPE.

 

7. A few implementations of Sugarscape on Python are available:

   • Peter Collingridge's implementation: Sugarscape revisited
   • Dan Kearney, Natalie Mattison and Theo Thompson's implementation: Case study: Sugarscape

 

8. A Repast Sugarscape is available.

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