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GAMA is an easy-to-use open source modeling and simulation environment for creating spatially explicit agent-based simulations. It has been developed to be used in any application domain: urban mobility, climate change adaptation, epidemiology, disaster evacuation strategy design, urban planning, are some of the application domains in which GAMA users are involved and for which they create models.
The generality of the agent-based approach advocated by GAMA is accompanied by a high degree of openness, which is manifested, for example, in the development of plugins designed to meet specific needs, or by the possibility of calling GAMA from other software or languages (such as R or Python). This openness allows the more than 2000 users of GAMA to use it for a wide variety of purposes: scientific simulation, scenario exploration and visualization, negotiation assistance, serious games, mediation or communication tools, the possibilities are endless!
The latest version of GAMA, labeled 1.9.1, can be freely downloaded or built from source, and comes with hundreds of templates, tutorials, and extensive online documentation.
The relevance of agent-based models depends largely on the quality of the data on which they are built and the ease with which they can access it. GAMA offers the possibility to load and manipulate easily GIS (Geographic Information System) data in the models, in order to make them the environment of artificial agents. It is also possible to directly import and use directly in models a large number of data types, such as CSV files, Shapefiles, OSM data, grids, images, SVG files, but also 3D files, such as 3DS or OBJ. GAMA also offers models the possibility to connect directly to databases (UsingDatabase) and to use external tools and environments such as R.
Thanks to GAML, its high-level and intuitive language, GAMA has been developed to be used by non-computer scientists: one can actually create a simulated world, declare species of agents, provide them with behaviors, and display them and their interactions in less than 10 minutes. GAML also offers all the power needed by advanced modellers: being an agent-oriented language coded in Java, it provides the possibility to build integrated models with several paradigms of modeling, to explore their parameters space and calibrate them and to run virtual experiments, all of these without leaving the platform.
GAML can be learnt easily by following first the step by step tutorial and then exploring the other tutorials and pedagogical resources available throughout this site. Since 2007, the developers behind GAMA also provide a continuous support through the active mailing list. Finally, in addition to this online support, training sessions for specialised audiences, on topics such as "urban management", "epidemiology", "risk management" are also organised and delivered by GAMA developers and users.
The user interface for both writing models and running experiments is one of the strongest points of GAMA. The platform indeed provides the possibility to have multiple displays for the same model, add as many visual representations as needed for the agents and therefore highlight the elements of interest in the simulations easily and beautifully. Advanced 3D displays are provided with all the support required for realistic renderings. Of course, dedicated statements allow to easily define charts for more dashboard-like presentations.
During simulations, interactive features can be made available to inspect the population of agents, define user-controlled action panels, or interactions with the displays and external devices.
GAMA is developed by several teams under the umbrella of the IRD/SU international research unit UMMISCO:
- UMI 209 UMMISCO, IRD/SU, 32 Avenue Henri Varagnat, 93143 Bondy Cedex, France.
- ACROSS International Joint Lab, Thuyloi University, Hanoi, Vietnam (since 2021)
- DREAM Research Team, University of Can Tho, Vietnam (since 2011).
- UMR 5505 IRIT, CNRS/University of Toulouse 1, France (since 2010).
- UR MIAT, INRAE, 24 Chemin de Borde Rouge, 31326 Castanet Tolosan Cedex, France (since 2016).
- UMR 6228 IDEES, CNRS/University of Rouen, France (2010 - 2019).
- UMR 8623 LRI, CNRS/University Paris-Sud, France (2011 - 2019).
- MSI Research Team, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam (2007 - 2015).
If you use GAMA in your research and want to cite it (in a paper, presentation, whatever), please use this reference:
Taillandier, P., Gaudou, B., Grignard, A.,Huynh, Q.-N., Marilleau, N., P. Caillou, P., Philippon, D., & Drogoul, A. (2019). Building, composing and experimenting complex spatial models with the GAMA platform. Geoinformatica, (2019), 23 (2), pp. 299-322, [doi:10.1007/s10707-018-00339-6]
or you can choose to cite the website instead:
GAMA Platform website, http://gama-platform.org
A complete list of references (papers and PhD theses on or using GAMA) is available on the references page.
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