This NetLogo model is an implementation of the mostly verbal (and graphic) model in Jarret Walker’s Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives (2011). Walker’s discussion is in the chapter “Connections or Complexity?”. See especially figure 12-2, which is on page 151.

In “Connections or Complexity?”, Walker frames the matter as involving a choice between two conflicting goals. The first goal is to minimize connections, the need to make transfers, in a transit system. People naturally prefer direct routes. The second goal is to minimize complexity. Why? Well, read the chapter, but as a general proposition we want to avoid unnecessary complexity with its attendant operating characteristics (confusing route plans in the case of transit) and management and maintenance challenges. With complexity general comes degraded robustness and resilience.

How do we, how can we, choose between these conflicting goals? The grand suggestion here is that we only choose indirectly, implicitly. In the present example of connections versus complexity we model various alternatives and compare them on measures of performance (MoP) other than complexity or connections per se. The suggestion is that connections and complexity are indicators of, heuristics for, other MoPs that are more fundamental, such as cost, robustness, energy use, etc., and it is these that we at bottom care most about. (Alternatively, and not inconsistently, we can view connections and complexity as two of many MoPs, with the larger issue to be resolve in light of many MoPs, including but not limited to complexity and connections.) We employ modeling to get a handle on these MoPs. Typically, there will be several, taking us thus to a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) situation. That’s the big picture.

EiLab explores the role of entropy in simple economic models. EiLab is one of several models exploring the dynamics of sustainable economics – PSoup, ModEco, EiLab, OamLab, MppLab, TpLab, and CmLab.

MUSA is an ABM that simulates the commuting sector in USA. A multilevel validation was implemented. Social network with a social-circle structure included. Two types of policies have been tested: market-based and preference-change.

Positive feedback can lead to “trapping” in local optima. Adding a simple negative feedback effect, based on ant behaviour, prevents this trapping

The model explores the impact of journal metrics (e.g., the notorious impact factor) on the perception that academics have of an article’s scientific value.

This model explores the coupled dynamics of social norm diffusion and finite resource depletion. Extending the “Affordance Landscape” framework by Kaaronen & Strelkovskii (2020), this simulation investigates how resource scarcity and regeneration rates influence the adoption of pro-environmental behaviours.

The model addresses the gap by linking behavioural norms to a depleting common-pool resource. It tests whether sustainable norms can diffuse rapidly enough to prevent ecological collapse and identifies “tipping points” where resource scarcity acts as a driver for behavioural change.

We developed an agent-based model to explore underlying mechanisms of behavioral clustering that we observed in human online shopping experiments.

This agent-based model simulates a stoplight parrotfish population in a heavily-fished Caribbean coral reef. The model allows for the simulation of various fishing regulations and observation of population and catch outcomes. It was built using the structure and equations from several previously published models, including the work of Bozec et al. (2016) and Alonzo and Mangel (2004 and 2005). The initial model conditions are parameterized to population and fishing data collected in Buen Hombre, Dominican Republic by Tyler Pavlowich.

A simple model illustrating RA Fisher’s (1930) reconciliation of Darwinian selection with particulate genetic contributions.

This ABM re-implements and extends the simulation model of peer review described in Squazzoni & Gandelli (Squazzoni & Gandelli, 2013 - doi:10.18564/jasss.2128) (hereafter: ‘SG’). The SG model was originally developed for NetLogo and is also available in CoMSES at this link.
The purpose of the original SG model was to explore how different author and reviewer strategies would impact the outcome of a journal peer review system on an array of dimensions including peer review efficacy, efficiency and equality. In SG, reviewer evaluation consists of a continuous variable in the range [0,1], and this evaluation scale is the same for all reviewers. Our present extension to the SG model allows to explore the consequences of two more realistic assumptions on reviewer evaluation: (1) that the evaluation scale is discrete (e.g. like in a Likert scale); (2) that there may be differences among their interpretation of the grades of the evaluation scale (i.e. that the grade language is heterogeneous).