Forecasting a Community’s Future via Agent-based Modeling
Robert N. Bernard
robert.bernard@us.pwcglobal.com


     CommunityViz (www.communityviz.com) is a decision support system for those involved in decision making in local governments, with an emphasis on local land use planning.  Fully integrated into the leading geographic information system, CommunityViz combines three-dimensional imagery, spatial spreadsheet functionality, impact analysis, and forecasting.  The forecasting component of CommunityViz is the Policy Simulator, which forecasts demographic, economic, and land use changes.  Policy Simulator's core method for forecasting is adaptive agent-based modeling, in which simulated people and
simulated businesses in the community interact to produce change at a local level.  Policy Simulator is not a toy model -- nor it is a prototype; it uses real world data from almost any community to forecast the community's future.  It is currently being used by 30 communities across the United States for planning their future.  This paper will explain how this agent-based simulation model has been used successfully for real-world applications, by showing examples of forecasts and policy changes implemented in real communities across the United States.  It will also demonstrate how parts of Policy Simulator were designed to serve the needs of the agent-based simulation model through its innovative agent-level data
preparation procedures, and its comprehensive data investigation techniques for tracing the life of agents.  Finally, this paper will show how users are able to implement local land use policy changes through the use of flexible policy templates, which change the environment in which the agents interact.