Reusing existing material stocks in developed built environments can significantly reduce the environmental footprint of the construction and demolition sector. However, material reuse in urban areas presents technical, temporal, and geographical challenges. Although a better understanding of spatial and temporal changes in material stocks could improve city resource management, limited scientific contributions have addressed this challenge.
This study details the steps followed in developing a spatially explicit rule-based simulation of materials stock. The simulation provides a proof of concept by incorporating the spatial and temporal dimensions of construction and demolition activities to analyse how various urban parameters determine material flows and embodied carbon in urban areas. The model explores the effects of 1) re-using recycled materials, 2) demolitions, 3) renovations and 4) various building typologies.
To showcase the model’s capabilities, the residential building stock of Gothenburg City is used as a case study, and eight building materials are tracked. Environmental impacts (A1-A3) are calculated with embodied carbon factors. The main parameters are explored in a baseline scenario. Then, a second scenario focuses on a hypothetical policy that promotes improvements in building energy performance.
The simulation can be expanded to include more materials and built environment assets and allows for future explorations on, for example, the role of logistics, the implementation of recycling or reuse stations, and, in general, supporting sustainable and circular strategies from the construction sector.

Investigate spatial adaptive behaviors of narco-trafficking networks in response to various counterdrug interdiction strategies within the cocaine transit zone of Central America and associated maritime areas. Through the novel application of the ‘complex adaptive systems’ paradigm, we implement a potentially transformative coupled agent-based and interdiction optimization modeling approach to compellingly demonstrate: (a) how current efforts to disrupt narco-trafficking networks are in fact making them more widespread, resilient, and economically powerful; (b) the potential for alternative interdiction approaches to weaken and contain traffickers.

Deforestation Simulation Model in NetLogo with GIS Layers

This model has developed in Netlogo software and utilizes
the GIS extension.
This NetLogo-based agent-based model (ABM) simulates deforestation dynamics using the GIS extension. It incorporates parameters like wood extraction, forest regeneration, agricultural expansion, and livestock impact. The model integrates spatial layers, including forest areas, agriculture zones, rural settlements, elevation, slope, and livestock distribution. Outputs include real-time graphical representations of forest loss, regeneration, and land-use changes. This model helps analyze deforestation patterns and conservation strategies using ABM and GIS.

Violence against women occurs predominantly in the family and domestic context. The COVID-19 pandemic led Brazil to recommend and, at times, impose social distancing, with the partial closure of economic activities, schools, and restrictions on events and public services. Preliminary evidence shows that intense co- existence increases domestic violence, while social distancing measures may have prevented access to public services and networks, information, and help. We propose an agent-based model (ABM), called VIDA, to illustrate and examine multi-causal factors that influence events that generate violence. A central part of the model is the multi-causal stress indicator, created as a probability trigger of domestic violence occurring within the family environment. Two experimental design tests were performed: (a) absence or presence of the deterrence system of domestic violence against women and measures to increase social distancing. VIDA presents comparative results for metropolitan regions and neighbourhoods considered in the experiments. Results suggest that social distancing measures, particularly those encouraging staying at home, may have increased domestic violence against women by about 10%. VIDA suggests further that more populated areas have comparatively fewer cases per hundred thousand women than less populous capitals or rural areas of urban concentrations. This paper contributes to the literature by formalising, to the best of our knowledge, the first model of domestic violence through agent-based modelling, using empirical detailed socioeconomic, demographic, educational, gender, and race data at the intraurban level (census sectors).

The purpose of the model is to simulate the cultural hitchhiking hypothesis to explore how neutral cultural traits linked with advantageous traits spread together over time

The model is intended to simulate visitor spatial and temporal dynamics, encompassing their numbers, activities, and distribution along a coastline influenced by beach landscape design. Our primary focus is understanding how the spatial distribution of services and recreational facilities (e.g., beach width, entrance location, recreational facilities, parking availability) impacts visitation density. Our focus is not on tracking the precise visitation density but rather on estimating the areas most affected by visitor activity. This comprehension allows for assessing the diverse influences of beach layouts on spatial visitor density and, consequently, on the landscape’s biophysical characteristics (e.g., vegetation, fauna, and sediment features).

Although beneficial to scientific development, data sharing is still uncommon in many research areas. Various organisations, including funding agencies that endorse open science, aim to increase its uptake. However, estimating the large-scale implications of different policy interventions on data sharing by funding agencies, especially in the context of intense competition among academics, is difficult empirically. Here, we built an agent-based model to simulate the effect of different funding schemes (i.e., highly competitive large grants vs. distributive small grants), and varying intensity of incentives for data sharing on the uptake of data sharing by academic teams strategically adapting to the context.

This model explores different aspects of the formation of urban neighbourhoods where residents believe in values distant from those dominant in society. Or, at least, this is what the Danish government beliefs when they discuss their politics about parallel societies. This simulation is set to understand (a) whether these alternative values areas form and what determines their formation, (b) if they are linked to low or no income residents, and (c) what happens if they disappear from the map. All these three points are part of the Danish government policy. This agent-based model is set to understand the boundaries and effects of this policy.

Patagonia PSMED is an agent-based model designed to study a simple case of Evolution of Ethnic Differentiation. It replicates how can hunter-gatherer societies evolve and built cultural identities as a consequence of the way they interacted.

Interactions of players embedded in a closed square lattice are determined by distance and overall gains and they lead to shifts of reward payoff between temptation and punishment. A new winner balancing against threats is ultimately discovered.