Complex agent networks: An emerging approach for modeling complex systems

Complexity and complex systems are all around us: from molecular and cellular systems in biology up to economics and human societies. There is an urgent need for methods that can capture the multi-scale spatio-temporal characteristics of complex systems. Recent emphasis has centered on two methods in particular, those being complex networks and agent-based models. In this paper we look at the combination of these two methods and identify “Complex Agent Networks”, as a new emerging computational paradigm for complex system modeling. We argue that complex agent networks are able to capture both individual-level dynamics as well as global-level properties of a complex system, and as such may help to obtain a better understanding of the fundamentals of such systems.