Multi-Agent Research and Simulation
As you might have realized, our site has been redesigned. The new site has a completly new look, the pages have been restructured and texts edited. All this has been done to better present ourselves to you. This includes both users of the simulation system as well as students wanting to work with and on MARS.
We hope you like the new look and that you have an easier time finding what you need. If you have questions or feedback regarding the new look, please contact us.
This week, we were visited by Rick D. McKenzie, PhD from the “Old Dominion University in Virginia, USA”. Rick is professor and chair at the department of “modeling, Simulation and Visualization Engineering”. The reason of the visit was the exchange of knowledge for future co-operations and him getting to know our team.
Another short course on social-ecological modelling was successfully conducted by members of the Ars Africae project and the MARS team at Witwatersrand University, South Africa (Wits Rural Facility). The general aim of this course is to introduce multi-agent modelling and simulation as a powerful tool to gain a better mechanistic understanding about complex adaptive systems like social-ecological systems are.
If you are interested in this general topic you may register for one of the next runs by sending an email to thomas.clemen@haw-hamburg.de. 
This week, we have been granted research funds from the city of Hamburg. The funds have been granted to the SmartOpenHamburg project which is part of the information platform ahoi.digital. Members of the MARS group will work on this project in cooperation with the University of Hamburg.
The project aims to empower decision makers, by giving better information for the urban space. The MARS simulation system will be used to simulate urban traffic, logistics among other topics and future scenarios for city development.
For the last two weeks, Gwendoline Traisnel has been visiting the MARS team. She is a Ph.D. student at Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
Her studies focus on the behavioral ecology of African penguins. She analyses between-individual variation in behavior and its influence on population dynamics during climate change.
The reason for visiting the MARS group is to develop an individual-based model to predict the impact of reduced prey availability on adult and chick African penguin survival rates.
Dr. Simon Scheiter and Carola Martens from the Senckenberg Research Institute at the University of Frankfurt visited the MARS lab between August, 14th and 17th. Both groups are currently working on different approaches for modelling savanna system dynamics. Main goal of this scientific exchange was discussing opportunities for coupling adaptive dynamic global vegetation models (aDGVM) with MARS. The very promising results will be published soon.
Last week, professor Greg Kiker and his PhD student Tori Morgan from the University of Florida (UF) visited us in Hamburg. The purpose of this visit was to deepen the partnership in ecological agent-based modelling, that exists since 2012.
Prof. Kiker is currently working on a research paper that compares the QND simulation system with MARS. Also, there are plans to use the MARS simulation system for educational purposes at the UF.
Tori Morgan recently started her studies on an agent-based model for simulating human and ecological exposure to mercury from informal gold mining activities in Columbia.
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Wir gratulieren unserem früheren Doktorstudenten Hodabalo Pereki (University de Lomé, Togo, West Africa) zu seinem Doktortitel.
Am Freitag, den 12. Februar verteidigte er seine herausragende Dissertation “Estimation of Tropical Forest’s Above Ground Biomass: Application of Remote Sensing and Ecological Modeling in Abdoulaye Wildlife Reserve (Togo, West Africa)”.
Herzlichen Glückwunsch von dem gesamten MARS-Team zu diesem wohlverdienten Titel!
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We are happy to announce that our former PhD student Hodabalo Pereki (University de Lomé, Togo, West Africa) finalized his PhD.
On Friday the 12th of February, he defended his outstanding doctoral dissertation “Estimation of Tropical Forest’s Above Ground Biomass: Application of Remote Sensing and Ecological Modeling in Abdoulaye Wildlife Reserve (Togo, West Africa)”.
The MARS team congratulates him for this well earned title.
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