Hoopoe Prediction

Developer

Duong, David

Introduction

Multi-agent system based programm for predicting hoopoe distribution in north germany

Table of contents

1. Simulation
2. Software Stack
3. How to setup?
4. Further Extension
5. Geographical data
6. Visualization

Run

The progam uses agents (hoopoes) to scout the environment. The environment is based on the data in the layers that are referencing the reallife environemnt. The agents are given characteristics of typical hoopoes when choosing a place to stay. Based on these characteristics the agents select places in the environment where a hoopoe could be seen. The data are georeferenced, so you view the exact position using a geographical informations system. The program uses data with WGS 84 EPSG:4326 as the coordinate reference system.

Software stack

This project is build on the C# multi-agent simulation framework MARS (Multi-Agent Research and Simulation) which provides all foundational structures to build a simulation environment with its agents and entities. The code for the simulation itself is written in C# whereas the visualization is written in python. To run the program your system needs the following requirements.

• Mars Live-Simulation 4.1.3 beta
• .Net 6.0

How to setup?

Simulation

1. Download the repository from the Gitlab page

   If you have installed Git on your operating system, you can execute the following command in your console to clone the program:

    git clone .....

   If Git is not installed on your system, you can download the game directly from our repository by clicking on the download icon in the right upper corner of the main page and download the game as a .zip file.

2. Open the programm After the download is finished, start your prefered C# IDE and open the project. We recommend you to use Rider, but any other C# IDE will do it too.

   └── 📁HoopoePrediction
       ├── 📁HoopoePrediction
   	      ├── 📄HoopoePrediction.csproj
             └── 📄...
   

3. In the situation that you dont know where to set the spawnpoints of the agents, set then variable runSim in Programm.cs to false and configure the parameters of the CreateSpawnpoints method in the "else"-block. (Make sure the path to the spawnpoints.csv file is correct)

4. Before you start the simulation make sure to check the configuration (config.json) of the program. The files for the corresponding layers have to be in directly "Ressource" folder (no nesting) and the numbers at the end of each filename have to be the same or the resulting data will be incorrect. The result files can be nested as long as the path in the congifuration file is correct. The result files are a copy of the "meadow" files, but named differently to differentiate the two.

• Quick explanation for the different configuration that are NOT path to files. Usually MARS provides a section for layer and agents in the configuration. But given the amount agents it takes to long to calculate the spawnpoints and rastersize of each agent (that are written in the spawnpoints.csv). Additonally to run hundreds if not thousands of agent can be quite exhausting for some computers. Thats why agents are created one by one manually in the LandscapLayer and it is recommended that you only spawn a few hundred agents at most and run the simulation multiple times:
  • AgentCount: The amount of agents you want to spawn.
  • Startpoint: The starting point you want the agents at.
  • RasterWidth: The raster width each agent has.
  • RasterLength: The raster length each agent has.
  • PercentageTiles: The least amount of meadow tiles a hoopoe agent has to find for a raster to be recognized as liveable.
  • MinHeigth: The preferred minimum height of a tile.
  • MaxHeight: The preferred maximum height of a tile.
  • TreeCount: Hoopoes use tree for there nest but it is hard to check each tree condition. TreeCount is the required amount of trees in a given raster to be considered liveable.

5. You should be able to run the programm.

Further Extension

If you want to add other methods or other extensions make sure to look at the following points.

• Add new data/layer: When providing a new layer (data source) you have to add it in the model (Program.cs), the config.json and the LandscapeLayer by reference. If you want the create objects in the enironment using the data, make sure to add new lines in the "InitLayer" method.
• Changes to data/layer: Be careful when switiching out a dataset, that the size of all the others match it.
• Add new objects/entities: If you add new objects/entities you need to also add a new entry in the enums in LandscapeLayer and in the "CreateEntity" method.
• New methods in agent: The system already provides you with some methods that can be used by the agents. If you want to add other methods you can operations that are provided by MARS for the specific environment type. To use the method, they have to be in the "Tick" method. (Pay attention to the order of (method) execution within the tick!)

Geographical data

Geographical data can be obtained by using the plugin QuickOsm in QGIS. (For data about the elevation the plugin SRTM-Downloader)

• All you need you need is to select the type of dataset of a specific region, you want to use. The plugin uses a key and value system, that can be looked up at QuickOsmWiki. For example #aeroway as the key, #aerodrome as the value and #schleswig-holstein as the region.
• The value of the geographical data that was used are the following: (highway) primary, (highway) secondary, (highway) motoway, (highway) tertiary, (natural) wood, (landuse) meadow.

Visualization

The programm is created in close dependency using QGIS. So to visualize everything you have to download the programm, create a new project and drag the "OpenStreetMap" layer on the left side to your workbench, to display the world map. To visualize the data that are used in the program, drag the files to qgis.

(If the files are displayed incorrectly, make sure the project crs (german:kbs) is in the format WGS 84 EPSG:4326)