EMMIT is an end-user developed agent-based simulation of malaria transmission. The simulation’s development is a case study demonstrating an approach for non-technical investigators to easily develop useful simulations of complex public health problems. We focused on malaria transmission, a major global public health problem, and insecticide resistance (IR), a major problem affecting malaria control. Insecticides are used to reduce transmission of malaria caused by the Plasmodium parasite that is spread by the Anopheles mosquito. However, the emergence and spread of IR in a mosquito population can diminish the insecticide’s effectiveness. IR results from mutations that produce behavioral changes or biochemical changes (such as detoxification enhancement, target site alterations) in the mosquito population that provide resistance to the insecticide. Evolutionary selection for the IR traits reduces the effectiveness of an insecticide favoring the resistant mosquito population. It has been suggested that biopesticides, and specifically those that are Late Life Acting (LLA), could address this problem. LLA insecticides exploit Plasmodium’s approximate 10-day extrinsic incubation period in the mosquito vector, a delay that limits malaria transmission to older infected mosquitoes. Since the proposed LLA insecticide delays mosquito death until after the exposed mosquito has a chance to produce several broods of offspring, reducing the selective pressure for resistance, it delays IR development and gives the insecticide longer effectivity. Such insecticides are designed to slow the evolution of IR thus maintaining their effectiveness for malaria control. For the IR problem, EMMIT shows that an LLA insecticide could work as intended, but its operational characteristics are critical, primarily the mean-time-to-death after exposure and the associated standard deviation. We also demonstrate the simulation’s extensibility to other malaria control measures, including larval source control and policies to mitigate the spread of IR. The simulation was developed using NetLogo as a case study of a simple but useful approach to public health research.

Our model is hybrid agent-based and equation based model for human air-borne infectious diseases measles. It follows an SEIR (susceptible, exposed,infected, and recovered) type compartmental model with the agents moving be-tween the four state relating to infectiousness. However, the disease model canswitch back and forth between agent-based and equation based depending onthe number of infected agents. Our society model is specific using the datato create a realistic synthetic population for a county in Ireland. The modelincludes transportation with agents moving between their current location anddesired destination using predetermined destinations or destinations selectedusing a gravity model.

This model simulates the spread of anti-vaccine sentiments in cyber and physical space and how it creates emergence of clusters of anti-vacciners, which eventually lead to higher probablity of disease outbreaks.

We demonstrate how a simple model of community associated Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) can be easily constructed by leveraging the statecharts and ReLogo capabilities in Repast Simphony.