Multi-Agent Design for Catchment Analysis

Economic and environmental outcomes in a catchment area present a complex problem involving the crop choices of independent farm operators, weather, prices, soil quality, hydrology and government imposed constraints. Multi-agent system design enables the modeling of complex systems. To be a useful decision making and policy testing tool the model should be interactive, with the ability to explore hypotheses and create realistic scenarios. Grid and cluster computing technology can provide the parallel processing power to enable fast solutions to the large optimization problems that can arise