Virtual environments and autonomous agents for urban park and garden management

Abstract

Urban parks and gardens are a heavily used resource. The quality of the recreational experience and the physical environment are at risk from over-use. Modelling recreator behaviour can identify management decisions that maximise benefit. Autonomous agents are an emerging approach to modelling people's movements based on their beliefs, desires and intentions. The behavioural characteristics of various agents will be assessed using surveys and controlled experiments in virtual environments. Agent-modelling based on these experiments will be applied in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. This is an ideal test environment but the results will have applicability in a wider international contex..