Blanche

Multi agent based computing modeling environment

Introduction

Blanche is a multi-agent based computational modeling environment to specify, simulate, and analyze the evolution and co-evolution of networks. Blanche was developed at the Team Engineering Collaboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as part of the NSF funded Project CITY. It is currently under development as part of the NSF funded project titled "Co-evolution of Knowledge Networks and 21st Century Organizational forms: Computational Modeling and Empirical Testing". Blanche has been developed by Andrew Hyatt, Tom Ferrone, Feihong Hsu, and Brian Willard under the direction of Professor Noshir Contractor.

Downloads

Download Blanche 4.8.1 - Click Here.

This software is available for non-commercial use or academic use only. If you wish to use the software for commercial purposes or want to work with us in further developing this software for commerical purposes, please contact us. This software is protected by copyright. You may not duplicate this software or make changes in the software under any circumstances without explicit written permission of the copyright owners.

Sample Models

Download Blanche tutorial model and initial data sets for Version 4.X - Click Here.
Download a step-by-step tutorial for using Blanche Version 4.X - Click Here (using the tutorial model and initial data sets above).

Documentation

Download Beginners' Guide to Blanche Version 4.x - Click Here
Download a Presentation on Introduction to Blanche - Click Here
Download documentation for setting up the Network Visualizer GraphApplet - Click Here

MBConvert is a utility which converts older ModelBuilder files (.mdl files) to the newer format (.mdl2 files). You do not need to use MBConvert if you downloaded Blanche 2.00 or higher. MBConvert can do batch conversion, that is, you can select multiple files for conversion.

*NOTE: The conversion process for MBConvert is not perfect, so you should back up all of your old .mdl files before you convert your files to .mdl2. There is a slight possibility that your .mdl files could be corrupted during the conversion process.

References

Hyatt, A., Contractor, N., & Jones, P. M. (1997). Computational organizational network modeling: Strategies and an example. Computational and Mathematical Organizational Theory, 4, 285-300.

Co-Evolution of Communication and Knowledge Networks as Transactive Memory Systems. Using Computational Modeling for Theoretical Integration and Extensions. Edward T. Palazzolo, Dana Serb, Yuechuan She, Chunke Su & Noshir S. Contractor.