The conference took place in the south of Dublin (Belfield) at the University College Dublin (UCD). VALUMICS representatives are there listening in on the topics concerning the VALUMICS research. Rossen Kazakov presented “Modelling market agent behaviour in food supply chain systems”
Session WD-49: Dynamical Models in Sustainable Development III –Wednesday June 26, 14:30-16:00 (GMT+1)
Abstract
Complexity arises in food supply chain systems from the points of view of managing fairness, sustainability and resilience, emerging out of agents interactions; this naturally suggests managing agent behaviour. The authors describe their approach to managing agents through the stages of mapping their behaviour and then simulation of intervention scenarios. This work is part of VALUMICS, an EU-funded project on understanding food value chains. We report on initial work on developing a qualitative food system model of the Salmon supply chain market, applying a complex adaptive systems perspective. The paper focusses on the problem of fairness related to price setting and price distribution, and illustrates how techniques like cognitive mapping and agent behaviour mapping are used for system analysis and agent rules definition. The goal of this qualitative agent modelling approach is to support the conceptual, functional and technical specification for the quantitative modelling phase. To complement the above complex systems perspective, the authors have also applied concepts from stakeholder theory, resource dependence theory and behavioural decision theory, to create a more comprehensive picture of market agents’ competitive behaviour.
