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Eidgenössische Techn. Hochsch., Diss.--Zürich, 2007. / Zsfassung in dt. Sprache.

Univ., Diss.--Karlsruhe, 2007.

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Zugl.: Vallendar, WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management, 2008.

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En ce début de XXIe siècle, le vin et la vigne constituent une richesse importante pour bon nombre de pays. Les territoires viticoles, tout en conservant leurs qualités d'espace de production, développent des stratégies d'adaptation à la globalisation du marché et aux attentes des consommateurs toujours plus versatiles. Or en raison de conditions orographiques particulières, les territoires de montagne et de fortes pentes voient leurs marges de manœuvre réduites. En effet, une grosse partie de leurs coûts de production reste bien souvent incompressible par rapport à la viticulture de plaine. Paradoxalement ces paysages viticoles, image du construit social et des équilibres environnementaux, participent à leur reconnaissance internationale. Le travail présenté ici est né en réponse à la sensibilité croissante de ces vignobles de fortes pentes. En nous appuyant sur deux territoires d'étude, en France le vignoble de la Côte Vermeille et en Italie le val di Cembra, nous questionnons les spécificités de la viticulture de fortes pentes. Notre approche met l'accent sur les possibilités offertes par des méthodes empiriques de modélisation à base d'agents pour proposer un regard renouvelé sur le rôle des interactions société-environnement dans le maintien et le développement de ces territoires sous contraintes. A travers une constellation de modèles multi-agents issus des questionnements récurrents des acteurs de la filière, et selon une démarche exploratoire et incrémentale, nous nous intéresserons ici à trois grands types de questions posées aux territoires viticoles de fortes pentes. Le premier concerne la place du marché et ses conséquences sur les dynamiques de couvert végétal à petite échelle. Le second type de questionnement explore également les dynamiques spatiales du couvert végétal, mais se place à mezzo-échelle, et propose de s'intéresser à la définition des règles socio-économiques simples qui sous-tendent les dynamiques foncières à l'échelle de quelques communes. Enfin le dernier volet de ce travail se place à grande échelle et s'intéresse à des phénomènes très descriptifs. L'ensemble de ces réflexions nous amènera ensuite à utiliser la modélisation co-construite avec les acteurs pour proposer une vision prospective globale pour les territoires de montagne et de fortes pentes. Cette approche prospective sera conduite en parallèle avec certains acteurs de la filière ce qui nous permettra de délimiter les variables structurelles propres aux systèmes de fortes pentes telles qu'elles sont ou non vécues par les acteurs. Basés sur la délimitation de ces variables, nous proposons enfin quatre scenarii prospectifs pour la viticulture en fortes pentes. / Wine and wineyards stand nowadays as a significant wealth for a number of countries. While retaining their properties as production space, vine-growing regions are developing adaptation strategies to market globalisation and to the ever more versatile consumer expectations. Yet, due to the corresponding specific orographic conditions in steep slope and mountain regions, actor's relative leeway is reducing ,. Comparatively to plain wine-growing, a large part of their production costs often remains indeed incompressible. On the other hand, these vine-growing landscape take advantage of such harsh conditions in terms of international recognition, as images of social construct and environmental equilibrium. The work presented here emerged as a response to this steep slope vineyards' sensitivity. This investigation relies on two study areas: the Côte Vermeille vineyards in France, and the val di Cembra in Italy. Our approach focuses on the opportunities granted by agent-based empirical modelling methods, in order to put forward a renewed look at the role of society-environment interactions in the sustainability and development of territories subject to constraints. Using an exploratory and incremental method, three significant issues of steep slope vine-growing regions have been addressed, thanks to a constellation of multi-agent models, derived from questioning actors of this sector. The first considers the market's impacts on the small-scale plant cover dynamics. The second issue focuses on meso-scale plant cover dynamics and questions the definition of simple socio-economic ruleset, within the frame of land property dynamics and applied to the scale of a few municipalities. The last section of this work is dedicated to some descriptive phenomena within a large scale. Thus, the sum of these reflections leads us to exploit co-designed modelling with the stakeholders in order to propose a global prospective vision for mountain and steep slope regions. This prospective approach is conducted in association with some of the players in the sector, thus allowing us to delineate the structural variables linked to steep slope vineyards' systems in agreement with their experience. Based on these delineated variables, four prospective scenarii are put forward for the steep slope vine-growing activity.

Through social learning, animals acquire information from others, such as skills and knowledge about the environment. High fidelity transmission of locally adaptive information can lead to population-specific traits, or cultural traits, which are fundamental to the emergence of culture. Despite social learning being widespread in the animal kingdom, culture is rare in nature. This thesis investigates the evolution, ecology, and dynamics of social learning, to increase our understanding why species differ in their ability to generate and accumulate cultural traits, and ultimately how complex human culture emerged. Chapter 2 introduces a novel computational model that explicitly incorporates competition into the social learning context. The model predicts that social learning is most adaptive where resources are unevenly distributed and stable through time, even if individuals compete for limited resources. The model provides an explanation for reports of animals disregarding social information, even if it is available. Testing these predictions Chapter 3 presents a bumblebee foraging experiment. The results support the theoretical predictions, showing that foragers use social information to find rewarding flowers, even if social cues indicate competition. Chapter 4 further examines the trade-off between access to social information and competition. Individuals that are central in a learning network have more opportunities to acquire information from others, but also face an increased likelihood to engage in competition. The results of this model suggest that across different learning contexts centrality is only beneficial for dominant individuals because dominance can mitigate the effect of competition. This also shows that individual phenotypic differences affect the utility of social information. Chapter 5 uses a dynamic network model approach to tests whether these differences modulate the structure of learning networks and by extension of the population. The model shows that this is the case and that where social learning is favoured by the environment networks are more structured. Chapter 6, studies the drivers behind individual differences in social learning. The chapter focusses on reports of sex differences in social information use and finds that they can be explained by differences in risk taking behaviour. The results highlight the importance of the feedback between learning individuals, and how this shapes social learning dynamics on an individual as well as on a population level.

abstract: Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) is the product of volunteers collaborating to build software in an open, public manner. The large number of FLOSS projects, combined with the data that is inherently archived with this online process, make studying this phenomenon attractive. Some FLOSS projects are very functional, well-known, and successful, such as Linux, the Apache Web Server, and Firefox. However, for every successful FLOSS project there are 100's of projects that are unsuccessful. These projects fail to attract sufficient interest from developers and users and become inactive or abandoned before useful functionality is achieved. The goal of this research is to better understand the open source development process and gain insight into why some FLOSS projects succeed while others fail. This dissertation presents an agent-based model of the FLOSS development process. The model is built around the concept that projects must manage to attract contributions from a limited pool of participants in order to progress. In the model developer and user agents select from a landscape of competing FLOSS projects based on perceived utility. Via the selections that are made and subsequent contributions, some projects are propelled to success while others remain stagnant and inactive. Findings from a diverse set of empirical studies of FLOSS projects are used to formulate the model, which is then calibrated on empirical data from multiple sources of public FLOSS data. The model is able to reproduce key characteristics observed in the FLOSS domain and is capable of making accurate predictions. The model is used to gain a better understanding of the FLOSS development process, including what it means for FLOSS projects to be successful and what conditions increase the probability of project success. It is shown that FLOSS is a producer-driven process, and project factors that are important for developers selecting projects are identified. In addition, it is shown that projects are sensitive to when core developers make contributions, and the exhibited bandwagon effects mean that some projects will be successful regardless of competing projects. Recommendations for improving software engineering in general based on the positive characteristics of FLOSS are also presented. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Computer Science 2011

O fenômeno do congestionamento, decorrente do rápido aumento da demanda por todos os meios de transporte só tende a se agravar, já que sistemas de transporte (vistos como um todo) têm um grande impacto na economia mundial. No caso do transporte veicular em particular, é notório que a demanda por mobilidade é uma das características da nossa sociedade. O impacto direto e indireto dos congestionamentos em áreas urbanas e interurbanas é imenso, e precisam ser avaliados adequadamente para que seus efeitos sejam pelo menos minorados. Esta dissertação apresenta o AVNET, uma modelagem baseada em agentes para avali- ação do balanceamento de carga em redes de tráfego veicular, capaz de investigar micros- copicamente a interação entre oferta, demanda e as particularidades do comportamento dos motoristas, aqui tratados como agentes autônomos capazes de perceber o estado do ambiente e se adaptar a ele utilizando replanejamento heurístico. O principal objetivo do AVNET é investigar a interação entre a percepção que o agente possui do tráfego e a consequente adaptação através da mudança de rota durante a viagem. De forma cíclica, o AVNET propõe que o estado do ambiente influencia na percepção do agente, e a ação do agente influencia no estado do ambiente. As medidas de balanceamento de carga visam avaliar o desempenho do ponto de vista do motorista, ao invés de abordar a avaliação do ponto de vista da rede como algumas abordagens tradicionalmente propõe. Experimentos foram realizados a partir da variação nas condições de oferta - utili- zando uma rede com topologia em estilo de grade e uma abstração de algumas vias arte- riais da cidade de Porto Alegre/RS - variação nas condições de demanda - o tipo de dis- tribuição e número de viagens - e dos tipos de agentes utilizados. Os resultados ajudam a responder como será o balanceamento de carga de redes de tráfego veicular conforme as condições de oferta e demanda do ambiente, e de percepção/ação dos agentes. / The phenomenon of congestion, due to the rapid increase in demand for all means of transport is only going to worsen, since systems transport (seen as a whole) have a major impact on the world economy. In the case of vehicular transport in particular, it is clear that the demand for mobility is a characteristic of our society. The direct and indirect impact of congestion in urban and long distance is immense, and must be properly evaluated for their effects are at least mitigated. This dissertation presents the AVNET, an agent-basead modelling to evaluate load bal- ancing in networks of vehicular traffic, able to microscopically investigate the interaction between supply, demand and the peculiarities of the behavior of drivers, here treated as autonomous agents, capable to perceive the state of the environment and adapt to it using heuristic redesign. The main goal of AVNET is to investigate the interaction between the perception that the agent has the traffic and the consequent adaptation by changing the route during the trip. Cyclically, the AVNET propose that the state of the environment influences the perception of the agent and the agent’s action influences the state of the environment. Experiments were performed from the variation in supply conditions - using a network grid topology and an abstraction of some arterial roads in the city of Porto Alegre/RS - changes in demand conditions - the type of distribution and number of trips - and the types of agents used. The results will help answer how the balancing network load of vehicular traffic as conditions of supply and demand of the environment, and perception / action agents.