We employ this spatially explicit agent-based model to begin to examine how time-averaging can affect the spatial scale of cultural similarity in archaeological assemblage data. The model was built to address this question: to what extent does time-averaging affect the scale of local spatial association in the relative frequency of the most prevalent cultural variant in an archaeological landscape?

An agent-based model of individual consumers making choices between five possible diets: omnivore, flexitarian, pescatarian, vegetarian, or vegan. Each consumer makes decisions based on personal constraints and values, and their perceptions of how well each diet matches with those values. Consumers can also be influenced by each other’s perceptions via interaction across three social networks: household members, friends, and acquaintances.

The basic premise of the model is to simulate several ‘agents’ going through build-buy cycles: Build: Factories follow simple rules of strategy in the allocation of resources between making exploration and exploitation type products. Buy: Each of two types of Consumers, early-adopters and late adopters, follow simple purchase decision rules in deciding to purchase a product from one of two randomly chosen factories. Thus, the two working ‘agents’ of the model are ‘factories’ and […]

The fight against poverty is an urgent global challenge. Microinsurance is promoted as a valuable instrument for buffering income losses due to health or climate-related risks of low-income households in developing countries. However, apart from direct positive effects they can have unintended side effects when insured households lower their contribution to traditional arrangements where risk is shared through private monetary support.

RiskNetABM is an agent-based model that captures dynamics between income losses, insurance payments and informal risk-sharing. The model explicitly includes decisions about informal transfers. It can be used to assess the impact of insurance products and informal risk-sharing arrangements on the resilience of smallholders. Specifically, it allows to analyze whether and how economic needs (i.e. level of living costs) and characteristics of extreme events (i.e. frequency, intensity and type of shock) influence the ability of insurance and informal risk-sharing to buffer income shocks. Two types of behavior with regard to private monetary transfers are explicitly distinguished: (1) all households provide transfers whenever they can afford it and (2) insured households do not show solidarity with their uninsured peers.

The model is stylized and is not used to analyze a particular case study, but represents conditions from several regions with different risk contexts where informal risk-sharing networks between smallholder farmers are prevalent.

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The “Descriptive Norm and Fraud Dynamics” model demonstrates how fraudulent behavior can either proliferate or be contained within non-hierarchical organizations, such as peer networks, through social influence taking the form of a descriptive norm. This model expands on the fraud triangle theory, which posits that an individual must concurrently possess a financial motive, perceive an opportunity, and hold a pro-fraud attitude to engage in fraudulent activities (red agent). In the absence of any of these elements, the individual will act honestly (green agent).

The model explores variations in a descriptive norm mechanism, ranging from local distorted knowledge to global perfect knowledge. In the case of local distorted knowledge, agents primarily rely on information from their first-degree colleagues. This knowledge is often distorted because agents are slow to update their empirical expectations, which are only partially revised after one-to-one interactions. On the other end of the spectrum, local perfect knowledge is achieved by incorporating a secondary source of information into the agents’ decision-making process. Here, accurate information provided by an observer is used to update empirical expectations.

The model shows that the same variation of the descriptive norm mechanism could lead to varying aggregate fraud levels across different fraud categories. Two empirically measured norm sensitivity distributions associated with different fraud categories can be selected into the model to see the different aggregate outcomes.

We construct a new type of agent-based model (ABM) that can simultaneously simulate land-use changes at multiple distant places (namely TeleABM, telecoupled agent-based model). We use soybean trade between Brazil and China as an example, where Brazil is the sending system and China is the receiving system because they are the world’s largest soybean exporter and importer respectively. We select one representative county in each country to calibrate and validate the model with spatio-temporal analysis of historical land-use changes and the empirical analysis of household survey data. The whole model is programmed on RePast Simphony. The most unique features of TeleABM are that it can simulate a telecoupled system and the flows between sending and receiving systems in this telecoupled system.

Ge, J., & Polhill, G. (2016). Exploring the Combined Impact of Factors Influencing Commuting Patterns and CO2 Emission in Aberdeen Using an Agent-Based Model. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 19(3). http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/19/3/11.html
We develop an agent-based transport model using a realistic GIS-enabled road network and the car following method. The model can be used to study the impact of social interventions such as flexi-time and workplace sharing, as well as large infrastructure such as the construction of a bypass or highway. The model is developed in Netlogo version 5 and requires road network data in GIS format to run.

This model simulates a group of farmers that have encounters with individuals of a wildlife population. Each farmer owns a set of cells that represent their farm. Each farmer must decide what cells inside their farm will be used to produce an agricultural good that is self in an external market at a given price. The farmer must decide to protect the farm from potential encounters with individuals of the wildlife population. This decision in the model is called “fencing”. Each time that a cell is fenced, the chances of a wildlife individual to move to that cell is reduced. Each encounter reduces the productive outcome obtained of the affected cell. Farmers, therefore, can reduce the risk of encounters by exclusion. The decision of excluding wildlife is made considering the perception of risk of encounters. In the model, the perception of risk is subjective, as it depends on past encounters and on the perception of risk from other farmers in the community. The community of farmers passes information about this risk perception through a social network. The user (observer) of the model can control the importance of the social network on the individual perception of risk.

The model demonstrates how non-instantaneous sampling techniques produce bias by overestimating the number of counted animals, when they move relative to the person counting them.

The development and popularisation of new energy vehicles have become a global consensus. The shortage and unreasonable layout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure (EVCI) have severely restricted the development of electric vehicles. In the literature, many methods can be used to optimise the layout of charging stations (CSs) for producing good layout designs. However, more realistic evaluation and validation should be used to assess and validate these layout options. This study suggested an agent-based simulation (ABS) model to evaluate the layout designs of EVCI and simulate the driving and charging behaviours of electric taxis (ETs). In the case study of Shenzhen, China, GPS trajectory data were used to extract the temporal and spatial patterns of ETs, which were then used to calibrate and validate the actions of ETs in the simulation. The ABS model was developed in a GIS context of an urban road network with travelling speeds of 24 h to account for the effects of traffic conditions. After the high-resolution simulation, evaluation results of the performance of EVCI and the behaviours of ETs can be provided in detail and in summary. Sensitivity analysis demonstrates the accuracy of simulation implementation and aids in understanding the effect of model parameters on system performance. Maximising the time satisfaction of ET users and reducing the workload variance of EVCI were the two goals of a multiobjective layout optimisation technique based on the Pareto frontier. The location plans for the new CS based on Pareto analysis can significantly enhance both metrics through simulation evaluation.