Computational Model Library

Displaying 10 of 182 results reviewed clear search

HUMLAND Fire-in-the-Hole is a conceptual agent-based model (ABM) designed to explore the ecological and behavioral consequences of fire-driven hunting strategies employed by hunter-gatherers, specifically Neanderthals, during the Last Interglacial period around the Neumark-Nord (Germany) archaeological site.

This model builds on and specializes the HUMLAND 1.0.0 model (Nikulina et al. 2024), integrating anthropogenic fires, elephant group behavior, and landscape response to simulate interactions between humans, megafauna, and vegetation over time.

Peer reviewed MicroAnts 2.5

Diogo Alves | Published Thursday, October 16, 2025

MicroAnts 2.5 is a general-purpose agent-based model designed as a flexible workhorse for simulating ecological and evolutionary dynamics in artificial populations, as well as, potentially, the emergence of political institutions and economic regimes. It builds on and extends Stephen Wright’s original MicroAnts 2.0 by introducing configurable predators, inequality tracking, and other options.
Ant agents are of two tyes/casts and controlled by 16-bit chromosomes encoding traits such as vision, movement, mating thresholds, sensing, and combat strength. Predators (anteaters) operate in static, random, or targeted predatory modes. Ants reproduce, mutate, cooperate, fight, and die based on their traits and interactions. Environmental pressures (poison and predators) and social dynamics (sharing, mating, combat) drive emergent behavior across red and black ant populations.
The model supports insertion of custom agents at runtime, configurable mutation/inversion rates, and exports detailed statistics, including inequality metrics (e.g., Gini coefficients), trait frequencies, predator kills, and lineage data. Intended for rapid testing and educational experimentation, MicroAnts 2.5 serves as a modular base for more complex ecological and social simulations.

This Agent-Based Model is designed to simulate how similarity-based partner selection (homophily) shapes the formation of co-offending networks and the diffusion of skills within those networks. Its purpose is to isolate and test the effects of offenders’ preference for similar partners on network structure and information flow, under controlled conditions.

In the model, offenders are represented as agents with an individual attribute and a set of skills. At each time step, agents attempt to select partners based on similarity preference. When two agents mutually select each other, they commit a co-offense, forming a tie and exchanging a skill. The model tracks the evolution of network properties (e.g., density, clustering, and tie strength) as well as the spread of skills over time.

This simple and theoretical model does not aim to produce precise empirical predictions but rather to generate insights and test hypotheses about the trade-off between network stability and information diffusion. It provides a flexible framework for exploring how changes in partner selection preferences may lead to differences in criminal network dynamics. Although the model was developed to simulate offenders’ interactions, in principle, it could be applied to other social processes involving social learning and skills exchange.

The wisdom of the crowd refers to the phenomenon in which a group of individuals, each making independent decisions, can collectively arrive at highly accurate solutions—often more accurate than any individual within the group. This principle relies heavily on independence: if individual opinions are unbiased and uncorrelated, their errors tend to cancel out when averaged, reducing overall bias. However, in real-world social networks, individuals are often influenced by their neighbors, introducing correlations between decisions. Such social influence can amplify biases, disrupting the benefits of independent voting. This trade-off between independence and interdependence has striking parallels to ensemble learning methods in machine learning. Bagging (bootstrap aggregating) improves classification performance by combining independently trained weak learners, reducing bias. Boosting, on the other hand, explicitly introduces sequential dependence among learners, where each learner focuses on correcting the errors of its predecessors. This process can reinforce biases present in the data even if it reduces variance. Here, we introduce a new meta-algorithm, casting, which captures this biological and computational trade-off. Casting forms partially connected groups (“castes”) of weak learners that are internally linked through boosting, while the castes themselves remain independent and are aggregated using bagging. This creates a continuum between full independence (i.e., bagging) and full dependence (i.e., boosting). This method allows for the testing of model capabilities across values of the hyperparameter which controls connectedness. We specifically investigate classification tasks, but the method can be used for regression tasks as well. Ultimately, casting can provide insights for how real systems contend with classification problems.

Peer reviewed CapOvCWD

Aniruddha Belsare | Published Tuesday, September 09, 2025 | Last modified Tuesday, November 11, 2025

CapOvCWD is an agent-based model that simulates a captive cervid herd composed of adults and fawns. The model deer population is initialized using data on herd size and composition from captive facility records. Individual deer domiciliary history and annual CWD testing records inform the herd size and sample size (for CWD testing), respectively. The model can be used to iteratively estimate the facility level annual CWD detection probability. Detection probability estimates can be further refined by incorporating multiyear CWD testing data. This approach can be particularly useful for interpreting negative test results from a subset of the captive herd. Facility level detection probability estimates provide a comprehensive and standardized risk metric that reflects the likelihood of undetected CWD in the facility.

The primary purpose of this model is to explain the dynamic processes within university-centered collaboration networks, with a particular focus on the complex transformation of academic knowledge into practical projects. Based on investigations of actual research projects and a thorough literature review, the model integrates multiple drivers and influencing factors to explore how these factors affect the formation and evolution of collaboration networks under different parameter scenarios. The model places special emphasis on the impact of disciplinary attributes, knowledge exchange, and interdisciplinary collaboration on the dynamics of collaboration networks, as well as the complex mechanisms of network structure, system efficiency, and interdisciplinary interactions during project formation.
Specifically, the model aims to:
- Simulate how university research departments drive the formation of research projects through knowledge creation.
- Investigate how the dynamics of collaboration networks influence the transformation of innovative hypotheses into matured projects.
- Examine the critical roles of knowledge exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration in knowledge production and project formation.
- Provide both quantitative and qualitative insights into the interactions among academia, industry, and project outputs.

ABM model studying impact of social cohesion on wellbeing of a society. Ibn Khaldun’s cyclical theory of history is being used as the theoretical lens along with some other theories. Social cohesion is measured as TSC = (TVE + 2 * (TPI * TPL - TNI * TNL))/((TPI+TNI))
Where
TSC total-social-cohesion ; Variable for social cohesion
TPI total-positive-interactions ; Count of positive interactions
TNI total-negative-interactions ; Count of negative interactions
TPL total-positive-learning ; Count of positive learning outcomes

Peer reviewed soslivestock model

Marco Janssen Irene Perez Ibarra Diego J. Soler-Navarro Alicia Tenza Peral | Published Wednesday, May 28, 2025 | Last modified Tuesday, June 10, 2025

The purpose of this model is to analyze how different management strategies affect the wellbeing, sustainability and resilience of an extensive livestock system under scenarios of climate change and landscape configurations. For this purpose, it simulates one cattle farming system, in which agents (cattle) move through the space using resources (grass). Three farmer profiles are considered: 1) a subsistence farmer that emphasizes self-sufficiency and low costs with limited attention to herd management practices, 2) a commercial farmer focused on profit maximization through efficient production methods, and 3) an environmental farmer that prioritizes conservation of natural resources and animal welfare over profit maximization. These three farmer profiles share the same management strategies to adapt to climate and resource conditions, but differ in their goals and decision-making criteria for when, how, and whether to implement those strategies. This model is based on the SequiaBasalto model (Dieguez Cameroni et al. 2012, 2014, Bommel et al. 2014 and Morales et al. 2015), replicated in NetLogo by Soler-Navarro et al. (2023).

One year is 368 days. Seasons change every 92 days. Each step begins with the growth of grass as a function of climate and season. This is followed by updating the live weight of animals according to the grass height of their patch, and grass consumption, which is determined based on the updated live weight. Animals can be supplemented by the farmer in case of severe drought. After consumption, cows grow and reproduce, and a new grass height is calculated. This updated grass height value becomes the starting grass height for the next day. Cows then move to the next area with the highest grass height. After that, cattle prices are updated and cattle sales are held on the first day of fall. In the event of a severe drought, special sales are held. Finally, at the end of the day, the farm balance and the farmer’s effort are calculated.

The model represents urban commuters’ transport mode choices among cars, public transit, and motorcycles—a mode highly prevalent in developing countries. Using an agent-based modeling approach, it simulates transport dynamics and serves as a testbed for evaluating policies aimed at improving mobility.

The model simulates an ecosystem of human agents who decide, at each time step, which mode of transportation to use for commuting to work. Their decision is based on a combination of personal satisfaction with their most recent journey—evaluated across a vector of individual needs—the information they crowdsource from their social network, and their personal uncertainty regarding trying new transport options.

Agents are assigned demographic attributes such as sex, age, and income level, and are distributed across city neighborhoods according to their socioeconomic status. To represent social influence in decision-making, agents are connected via a scale-free social network topology, where connections are more likely among agents within the same socioeconomic group, reflecting the tendency of individuals to form social ties with similar others.

Overview

The Weather model is a procedural generation model designed to create realistic daily weather data for socioecological simulations. It generates synthetic weather time series for solar radiation, temperature, and precipitation using algorithms based on sinusoidal and double logistic functions. The model incorporates stochastic variation to mimic unpredictable weather patterns and aims to provide realistic yet flexible weather inputs for exploring diverse climate scenarios.

The Weather model can be used independently or integrated into larger models, providing realistic weather patterns without extensive coding or data collection. It can be customized to meet specific requirements, enabling users to gain a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms and have greater confidence in their applications.

Displaying 10 of 182 results reviewed clear search

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