In a discussion with a colleague today we talked briefly about stocks and flows networks. It struck me that a stocks and flows model is a limited sort of service-oriented agent-based model. In a service-oriented agent-based model, agents accept inputs and produce outputs -- the simplest version being a supply chain. That's really a stocks and flows model in which the agents control the flows. Important differences are:
- In an agent-based model, the agents are assumed to be autonomous in various ways. In a stocks and flows model the flow rates are not autonomous. The flow rates are equations that don't have the ability to change themselves.They are assumed to be facts about the nature of the domain being modeled. - In a service-oriented agent-based model the agents have the ability to reconfigure themselves dynamically and perhaps even to add new agents and new stock nodes. In a stocks and flows model, the structure of the network static. So this raises the question whether anyone knows of any work in stocks and flows modeling that addresses stocks and flows networks that are flexible in the ways just mentioned. -- Russ
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