Alessandro Pluchino, University of Catania, Italy

Netlogo: Introduction to an agent-based simulation environment

NetLogo is a multi-agent programmable modeling environment, used by tens of thousands of students, teachers and researchers worldwide. Originally developed by Uri Wilensky in 1999 at the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling at Northwestern University of Chicago (http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/), it offers an ideal development environment for creating simulation models for agents, networks and dynamical systems.
Within Netlogo is possible to reproduce many of the features of a complex system made by thousands of interacting elements, study its evolution over time and display it in real time inside of a virtual laboratory 2D or 3D. Netlogo is written in Java but is fully programmable via a meta-object-oriented language based on the simplified syntax of Logo (created by S.Papert and others in 1967). The tutorial will give the basis of the Netlogo programming language trough several examples and provides also a practice interactive session where students can create their own simulations.