---
id: books/agent-based-modelling-and-geographical-information-systems
about:
  label: Agent-Based Modelling and Geographical Information Systems
  description: >-
    A practical primer from Crooks, Malleson, Manley and Heppenstall, 2019, on
    building agent-based models of people in places and linking them to GIS,
    with worked examples in NetLogo.
  tags:
    - agent-based
    - gis
    - netlogo
    - textbook
    - practical
  depiction: cover.jpg
book:
  authors:
    - Andrew Crooks
    - Nick Malleson
    - Ed Manley
    - Alison Heppenstall
  publisher: SAGE Publications
  year: 2019
  isbn: '9781473958654'
  url: 'https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20522296W'
domains:
  - places
  - people
  - mobility
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: >-
        Agent-Based Modelling and Geographical Information Systems: A Practical
        Primer - Andrew Crooks, Nicolas Malleson, Ed Manley, Alison Heppenstall
        - Google Books
      url: 'https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9781473958654'
    - title: 'Open Library: Agent-Based Modelling and Geographical Information Systems'
      url: 'https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20522296W'
  created: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
A textbook that takes the reader from first principles to working spatial models. It starts with geographical modelling and the basics of GIS, including QGIS, then moves through designing and building agent-based models, calibrating and validating them, and representing human behaviour, with examples built in NetLogo and code on a companion site. The aim is that a reader finishes able to build their own model and start a research project with it.

For someone building a twin of a place this is the hands-on companion to the edited Springer volume by overlapping authors. It is the quickest route from a shapefile and a question to a running model with people in it, and its chapters on calibration and validation are the ones most twin projects skip.

Cover via Open Library.