JABLUS Dairy Farm Simulator
Run a virtual Scottish dairy farm!
Welcome to the JABLUS Dairy Farm Simulator website. Use the links
below for information on how to download and use the system.
If you have any questions feel free to contact
the author.
About JABLUS
The JABLUS dairy farm simulator is a tool designed to allow
you to try your hand at running and managing a dairy farm.
The program simulates changing weather, market conditions,
crop/pasture growth, soil nutrients, cow life-cycle, digestion
and milk productivity. As a virtual farmer you have control over
a 200 hectare collection of fields, and your very own cow herd.
To be successful, farmers must maintain a herd of milk producing
cows, while using the farm land to grow nutricious feeds and
provide lush pastures for the herd. In addition to managing
the weekly regime, farmers will also need to keep an eye on
the weather as well as changing milk, feed and livestock prices
to ensure productive cropping and good profits.
Purpose
The system was built for use in decision making experiments,
using participatory simulation. The aim of the research is to
gain more insight into exactly how farming decisions are made.
In particular, the aim is to establish whether the BDI
(Beliefs-Desires-Intentions)
agent architecture is a representative model of human decision making.
The research takes place in two phases. The first phase involves participatory dairy farm simulations with real dairy farmers making the management decisions. Farmers will be asked to manage the simulated dairy farm under a number of different scenarios, each involving their own specific farming challenges. Decisions made during the experiments are recorded for use in the second phase.
In the second phase artificial farmer agents will manage the simulated dairy farm. The aim is to build farming agents which behave in a similar manner to the real dairy farmers. This will be done by encoding the recorded decisions into a form which can be executed in the BDI agent program. The behaviour of the artificial agent will be compared to that of the real farmers by comparing their farming decisions under different scenarios.
The research takes place in two phases. The first phase involves participatory dairy farm simulations with real dairy farmers making the management decisions. Farmers will be asked to manage the simulated dairy farm under a number of different scenarios, each involving their own specific farming challenges. Decisions made during the experiments are recorded for use in the second phase.
In the second phase artificial farmer agents will manage the simulated dairy farm. The aim is to build farming agents which behave in a similar manner to the real dairy farmers. This will be done by encoding the recorded decisions into a form which can be executed in the BDI agent program. The behaviour of the artificial agent will be compared to that of the real farmers by comparing their farming decisions under different scenarios.