Existing studies on prejudice, which is important in multi-group dynamics in societies, focus on the social-psychological knowledge behind the processes involving prejudice and its propagation. We instead create a multi-agent framework that simulates the propagation of prejudice and measures its tangible impact on the prosperity of individuals as well as of larger social structures, including groups and factions within. Groups in society help us define prejudice, and factions represent smaller tight-knit circles of individuals with similar opinions. We model social interactions using the Continuous Prisoner’s Dilemma (CPD) and a type of agent called a prejudiced agent, whose cooperation is affected by a prejudice attribute, updated over time based both on the agent’s own experiences and those of others in its faction. This model generates various results that both provide new insights into intergroup prejudice and its effects, as well as highlight and reinforce certain existing notions of prejudice.

The purpose of this model is to explore the dynamics of residency and eviction for households renting in the greater Phoenix (Arizona) metropolitan area. The model uses a representative population of renters modified from American Community Survey (ACS) data that includes demographic, housing and economic information. Each month, households pay their subsistence, rental and utility bills. If a household is unable to pay their monthly rent or utility bill they apply for financial assistance. This model provides a platform to understand the impact of various economic shock upon households. Also, the model includes conditions that occurred as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic which allows for the study of eviction mitigation strategies that were employed, such as the eviction moratorium and stimulus payments. The model allows us to make preliminary predictions concerning the number of households that may be evicted once the moratorium on evictions ends and the long-term effects on the number of evicted households in the greater Phoenix area going forward.

This model has been developed together with the publication ‘Modelling Value Change - An Exploratory Approach’

Value change and moral change have increasingly become topics of interest in the philosophical literature. Several theoretical accounts have been proposed. Such accounts are usually based on certain theoretical and conceptual assumptions and their strengths and weaknesses are often hard to determine and compare, also because they are based on limited empirical evidence.

We propose that a step forward can be made with the help of agent-based modelling (ABM). ABM can be used to investigate whether a simulation model based on a specific account of value change can reproduce relevant phenomena. To illustrate this approach, we built a model based on the pragmatist account of value change proposed in van de Poel and Kudina (2022). We show that this model can reproduce four relevant phenomena, namely 1) the inevitability and stability of values, 2) how different societies may react differently to external shocks, 3) moral revolutions, and 4) lock-in.

According to the philosopher of science K. Popper “All life is problem solving”. Genetic algorithms aim to leverage Darwinian selection, a fundamental mechanism of biological evolution, so as to tackle various engineering challenges.
Flibs’NFarol is an Agent Based Model that embodies a genetic algorithm applied to the inherently ill-defined “El Farol Bar” problem. Within this context, a group of agents operates under bounded rationality conditions, giving rise to processes of self-organization involving, in the first place, efficiency in the exploitation of available resources. Over time, the attention of scholars has shifted to equity in resource distribution, as well. Nowadays, the problem is recognized as paradigmatic within studies of complex evolutionary systems.
Flibs’NFarol provides a platform to explore and evaluate factors influencing self-organized efficiency and fairness. The model represents agents as finite automata, known as “flibs,” and offers flexibility in modifying the number of internal flibs states, which directly affects their behaviour patterns and, ultimately, the diversity within populations and the complexity of the system.

IMine is a flexible framework which can be adopt multiple criteria for convergence to solve Influence Minig problems. It can use any diffusion model, as well as resilience to compute the influence of a set of nodes base on the use case.
The code is written and tested on ‘R’ v3.5

Digital social networks facilitate the opinion dynamics and idea flow and also provide reliable data to understand these dynamics. Public opinion and cooperation behavior are the key factors to determine the capacity of a successful and effective public policy. In particular, during the crises, such as the Corona virus pandemic, it is necessary to understand the people’s opinion toward a policy and the performance of the governance institutions. The problem of the mathematical explanation of the human behaviors is to simplify and bypass some of the essential process. To tackle this problem, we adopted a data-driven strategy to extract opinion and behavioral patterns from social media content to reflect the dynamics of society’s average beliefs toward different topics. We extracted important subtopics from social media contents and analyze the sentiments of users at each subtopic. Subsequently, we structured a Bayesian belief network to demonstrate the macro patters of the beliefs, opinions, information and emotions which trigger the response toward a prospective policy. We aim to understand the factors and latent factors which influence the opinion formation in the society. Our goal is to enhance the reality of the simulations. To capture the dynamics of opinions at an artificial society we apply agent-based opinion dynamics modeling. We intended to investigate practical implementation scenarios of this framework for policy analysis during Corona Virus Pandemic Crisis. The implemented modular modeling approach could be used as a flexible data-driven policy making tools to investigate public opinion in social media. The core idea is to put the opinion dynamics in the wider contexts of the collective decision-making, data-driven policy-modeling and digital democracy. We intended to use data-driven agent-based modeling as a comprehensive analysis tools to understand the collective opinion dynamics and decision making process on the social networks and uses this knowledge to utilize network-enabled policy modeling and collective intelligence platforms.

Sahelian transhumance is a type of socio-economic and environmental pastoral mobility. It involves the movement of herds from their terroir of origin (i.e., their original pastures) to one or more host terroirs, followed by a return to the terroir of origin.  According to certain pastoralists, the mobility of herds is planned to prevent environmental degradation, given the continuous dependence of these herds on their environment. However, these herds emit Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) in the spaces they traverse. Given that GHGs contribute to global warming, our long-term objective is to quantify the GHGs emitted by Sahelian herds. The determination of these herds’ GHG emissions requires: (1) the artificial replication of the transhumance, and (2) precise knowledge of the space used during their transhumance.
This article presents the design of an artificial replication of the transhumance through an agent-based model named MSTRANS. MSTRANS determines the space used by transhumant herds, based on the decision-making process of Sahelian transhumants.
MSTRANS integrates a constrained multi-objective optimization problem and algorithms into an agent-based model. The constrained multi-objective optimization problem encapsulates the rationality and adaptability of pastoral strategies. Interactions between a transhumant and its socio-economic network are modeled using algorithms, diffusion processes, and within the multi-objective optimization problem. The dynamics of pastoral resources are formalized at various spatio-temporal scales using equations that are integrated into the algorithms.
The results of MSTRANS are validated using GPS data collected from transhumant herds in Senegal. MSTRANS results highlight the relevance of integrated models and constrained multi-objective optimization for modeling and monitoring the movements of transhumant herds in the Sahel. Now specialists in calculating greenhouse gas emissions have a reproducible and reusable tool for determining the space occupied by transhumant herds in a Sahelian country. In addition, decision-makers, pastoralists, veterinarians and traders have a reproducible and reusable tool to help them make environmental and socio-economic decisions.

The spatially-explicit AgriculTuralLandscApe Simulator (ATLAS) simulates realistic spatial-temporal crop availability at the landscape scale through crop rotations and crop phenology.

This project attempts to model how social media platforms recommend a user followers based on their interests, and how those individual interests change as a result of the influences from those they follow/are followed by.

We have three types of users on the platform:

Consumers (🔴), who update their interests based on who they’re following.
Creators (⬛), who update their interests based on who’s following them.
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Dawkins’ Weasel is a NetLogo model that illustrates the principle of evolution by natural selection. It is inspired by a thought experiment presented by Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker (1996).