Muaz is a Senior Member of the IEEE and has more than 15 years of professional, teaching and research experience. Muaz has been working on Communication Systems and Networks since 1995. His BS project in 1995 was on the development of a Cordless Local Area Network. In 1996, his postgraduate project was on Wireless Connectivity of devices to Computers. In addition to his expertise as an Communications engineer, his areas of research interest are in the development of agent-based and complex network-based models of Complex Adaptive Systems. He has worked on diverse case studies ranging from Complex Communication Networks, Biological Networks, Social Networks, Ecological system modeling, Research and Scientometric modeling and simulation etc. He has also worked on designing and developing embedded systems, distributed computing, multiagent and service-oriented architectures.

I’m modelling LandUse and Cover Changes, Biodiversity impact and Biological corridors for Surrogate Species shared by US and Mexico.

I am a geographer interested in exploring tourism system dynamics and assessing tourism’s role in environmental sustainability using agent-based modelling (ABM). My current work focus is on human complex systems interactions with the environment and on the application of tools (such as scenario analysis, network analysis and ABM) to explore topics systems adaptation, vulnerability and resilience to global change. I am also interested in looking into my PhD future research directions which pointed the potential of Big Data, social media and Volunteer Geographical Information to increase destination awareness.
I have extensive experience in GIS, quantitative and qualitative methods of research. My master thesis assessed the potential for automatic feature extraction from QuickBird imagery for municipal management purposes. During my PhD I have published and submitted several scientific papers in ISI indexed journals. I have a good research network in Portugal and I integrate an international research network on the topic “ABM meets tourism”. I am a collaborator in a recently awarded USA NCRCRD grant project “Using Agent Based Modelling to Understand and Enhance Rural Tourism Industry Collaboration” and applied for NSF funding with the project “Understanding and Enhancing the Resilience of Recreation and Tourism Dependent Communities in the Gulf”.

I obtained a PhD in database information theory from the University of the West of Scotland in 2015, and have been a researcher at the James Hutton Institute ever since. My areas of research are agent-based-modelling (ABM), data curation, effective use of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and semantic information representation and extraction using formal structures such as computerised ontologies, relational databases and any other structured or semi-structured data representations. I primarily deal with social and agricultural models and was originally taken on in the role of knowledge engineer in order to create the ontology for the H2020 project, Green Lifestyles, Alternative Models and Upscaling Regional Sustainability (GLAMURS). Subsequent work, for the Scottish Government has involved the use of IaaS, more commonly referred to as the “cloud” to create rapidly deployable and cheap alternatives to in-house high-performance computing for both ABM and Geographical Information System models.

It is the mixture of skills and interests involving modelling, data organisation and computing infrastructure expertise that I believe will be highly apposite in the duties associated with being a member of the CoMSES executive. Moreover, prior to joining academia, I spent about 25 years as a developer in commercial IT, in the agricultural, entertainment and banking sectors, and feel that such practical experience can only benefit the CoMSES network.

• Agent-based Modeling
• Automated Planning and Distributed Problem Solving
• Natural Language Processing
• Machine Learning
• Internet of Things and Cloud-based Distributed Architectures

I use ABM to study organizations, leadership, employee behavior and performance, and the social/psychological theories addressing workplace behavior and outcomes.

I have also used ABM to explore mass violence, active shooters, and mass shootings, including the spread of mass violence and its antecedents.

My experience is diverse, with research in spatial analyses and GIS, ecosystem modeling, landscape ecology, database management, biogeographical relationships of birds and plants, species/habitat relationships, wildlife and pastoral livestock mobility, spectroscopy, cluster analysis, and telemetry techniques. Research projects are ongoing in Colorado, the contiguous US, Kenya, Mali, and Tibet.

I am interested in modeling socio-ecological systems. I am currently working on the implementation of a seed-exchange model for understanding the role of some kinship patterns (locality and seed heritage rules) in agrobiodiversity.