This is a generic sub-model of animal territory formation. It is meant to be a reusable building block, but not in the plug-and-play sense, as amendments are likely to be needed depending on the species and region. The sub-model comprises a grid of cells, reprenting the landscape. Each cell has a “quality” value, which quantifies the amount of resources provided for a territory owner, for example a tiger. “Quality” could be prey density, shelter, or just space. Animals are located randomly in the landscape and add grid cells to their intial cell until the sum of the quality of all their cells meets their needs. If a potential new cell to be added is owned by another animal, competition takes place. The quality values are static, and the model does not include demography, i.e. mortality, mating, reproduction. Also, movement within a territory is not represented.

The NIER model is intended to add qualitative variables of building owner types and peer group scales to existing energy efficiency retrofit adoption models. The model was developed through a combined methodology with qualitative research, which included interviews with key stakeholders in Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The concepts that the NIER model adds to traditional economic feasibility studies of energy retrofit decision-making are differences in building owner types (reflecting strategies for managing buildings) and peer group scale (neighborhoods of various sizes and large-scale Districts). Insights from the NIER model include: large peer group comparisons can quickly raise the average energy efficiency values of Leader and Conformist building owner types, but leave Stigma-avoider owner types as unmotivated to retrofit; policy interventions such as upgrading buildings to energy-related codes at the point of sale can motivate retrofits among the lowest efficient buildings, which are predominantly represented by the Stigma-avoider type of owner; small neighborhood peer groups can successfully amplify normal retrofit incentives.

The Communication-Based Model of Perceived Descriptive Norm Dynamics in Digital Networks (COMM-PDND) is an agent-based model specifically created to examine the dynamics of perceived descriptive norms in the context of digital network structures. The model, developed as part of a master’s thesis titled “The Dynamics of Perceived Descriptive Norms in Digital Network Publics: An Agent-Based Simulation,” emphasizes the critical role of communication processes in norm formation. It focuses on the role of communicative interactions in shaping perceived descriptive norms.

The COMM-PDND is tuned to explore the effects of normative deviance in digital social networks. It provides functionalities for manipulating agents according to their network position, and has a versatile set of customizable parameters, making it adaptable to a wide range of research contexts.

The model is based on the influence function of the Leviathan model (Deffuant, Carletti, Huet 2013 and Huet and Deffuant 2017) with the addition of group idenetity. We aim at better explaining some patterns generated by this model, using a derived mathematical approximation of the evolution of the opinions averaged.

We consider agents having an opinion/esteem about each other and about themselves. During dyadic meetings, agents change their respective opinion about each other, and possibly about other agents they gossip about, with a noisy perception of the opinions of their interlocutor. Highly valued agents are more influential in such encounters. Moreover, each agent belongs to a single group and the opinions within the group are attracted to their average.

We show that a group hierarchy can emerges from this model, and that the inequality of reputations among groups have a negative effect on the opinions about the groups of low status. The mathematical analysis of the opinion dynamic shows that the lower the status of the group, the more detrimental the interactions with the agents of other groups are for the opinions about this group, especially when gossip is activated. However, the interactions between agents of the same group tend to have a positive effect on the opinions about this group.

Plastics and the pollution caused by their waste have always been a menace to both nature and humans. With the continual increase in plastic waste, the contamination due to plastic has stretched to the oceans. Many plastics are being drained into the oceans and rose to accumulate in the oceans. These plastics have seemed to form large patches of debris that keep floating in the oceans over the years. Identification of the plastic debris in the ocean is challenging and it is essential to clean plastic debris from the ocean. We propose a simple tool built using the agent-based modeling framework NetLogo. The tool uses ocean currents data and plastic data both being loaded using GIS (Geographic Information System) to simulate and visualize the movement of floatable plastic and debris in the oceans. The tool can be used to identify the plastic debris that has been piled up in the oceans. The tool can also be used as a teaching aid in classrooms to bring awareness about the impact of plastic pollution. This tool could additionally assist people to realize how a small plastic chunk discarded can end up as large debris drifting in the oceans. The same tool might help us narrow down the search area while looking out for missing cargo and wreckage parts of ships or flights. Though the tool does not pinpoint the location, it might help in reducing the search area and might be a rudimentary alternative for more computationally expensive models.

Organizations are complex systems comprised of many dynamic and evolving interaction patterns among individuals and groups. Understanding these interactions and how patterns, such as informal structures and knowledge sharing behavior, emerge are crucial to creating effective and efficient organizations. To explore such organizational dynamics, the agent-based model integrates a cognitive model, dynamic social networks, and a physical environment.

This research article presents an agent-based simulation hereinafter called COMMONSIM. It builds on COMMONISM, i.e. a large-scale commons-based vision for a utopian society. In this society, production and distribution of means are not coordinated via markets, exchange, and money, or a central polity, but via bottom-up signalling and polycentric networks, i.e. ex-ante coordination via needs. Heterogeneous agents care for each other in life groups and produce in different groups care, environmental as well as intermediate and final means to satisfy sensual-vital needs. Productive needs decide on the magnitude of activity in groups for a common interest, e.g. the production of means in a multi-sectoral artificial economy. Agents share cultural traits identified by different behaviour: a propensity for egoism, leisure, environmentalism, and productivity. The narrative of this utopian society follows principles of critical psychology and sociology, complexity and evolution, the theory of commons, and critical political economy. The article presents the utopia and an agent-based study of it, with emphasis on culture-dependent allocation mechanisms and their social and economic implications for agents and groups.

This model extends the original Artifical Anasazi (AA) model to include individual agents, who vary in age and sex, and are aggregated into households. This allows more realistic simulations of population dynamics within the Long House Valley of Arizona from AD 800 to 1350 than are possible in the original model. The parts of this model that are directly derived from the AA model are based on Janssen’s 1999 Netlogo implementation of the model; the code for all extensions and adaptations in the model described here (the Artificial Long House Valley (ALHV) model) have been written by the authors. The AA model included only ideal and homogeneous “individuals” who do not participate in the population processes (e.g., birth and death)–these processes were assumed to act on entire households only. The ALHV model incorporates actual individual agents and all demographic processes affect these individuals. Individuals are aggregated into households that participate in annual agricultural and demographic cycles. Thus, the ALHV model is a combination of individual processes (birth and death) and household-level processes (e.g., finding suitable agriculture plots).

As is the case for the AA model, the ALHV model makes use of detailed archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from the Long House Valley and the adjacent areas in Arizona. It also uses the same methods as the original model (from Janssen’s Netlogo implementation) to estimate annual maize productivity of various agricultural zones within the valley. These estimates are used to determine suitable locations for households and farms during each year of the simulation.

This model is an extension of the Artificial Long House Valley (ALHV) model developed by the authors (Swedlund et al. 2016; Warren and Sattenspiel 2020). The ALHV model simulates the population dynamics of individuals within the Long House Valley of Arizona from AD 800 to 1350. Individuals are aggregated into households that participate in annual agricultural and demographic cycles. The present version of the model incorporates features of the ALHV model including realistic age-specific fertility and mortality and, in addition, it adds the Black Mesa environment and population, as well as additional methods to allow migration between the two regions.

As is the case for previous versions of the ALHV model as well as the Artificial Anasazi (AA) model from which the ALHV model was derived (Axtell et al. 2002; Janssen 2009), this version makes use of detailed archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from the Long House Valley and the adjacent areas in Arizona. It also uses the same methods as the original AA model to estimate annual maize productivity of various agricultural zones within the Long House Valley. A new environment and associated methods have been developed for Black Mesa. Productivity estimates from both regions are used to determine suitable locations for households and farms during each year of the simulation.

The MML is a hybrid modeling environment that couples an agent-based model of small-holder agropastoral households and a cellular landscape evolution model that simulates changes in erosion/deposition, soils, and vegetation.