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 Carington model is designed to provide insights into the factors affecting informal health care for older adults. It encompasses older adults, caregivers, and factors affecting informal health care. The Carington model includes no submodels.

This model is an implementation of a predator-prey simulation using NetLogo programming language. It simulates the interaction between fish, lionfish, and zooplankton. Fish and lionfish are both represented as turtles, and they have their own energy level. In this simulation, lionfish eat fish, and fish eat zooplankton. Zooplankton are represented as green patches on the NetLogo world. Lionfish and fish can reproduce and gain energy by eating other turtles or zooplankton.

This model was created to help undergraduate students understand how simulation models might be helpful in addressing complex environmental problems. In this case, students were asked to use this model to make predictions about how the introduction of lionfish (considered an invasive species in some places) might alter the ecosystem.

We present an agent-based model that maps out and simulates the processes by which individuals within ecological restoration organizations communicate and collectively make restoration decisions.

This model is part of an article that discusses the adoption of a complexity theory approach to study the dynamics of language contact within multilingual communities. The model simulates the dynamics of communication within a community where a minority and a majority group coexist. The individual choice of language for communication is based on a number of simple rules derived from a review of the main literature on the topic of language contact. These rules are then combined with different variables, such as the rate of exogamy of the minority group and the presence of relevant education policies, to estimate the trends of assimilation of the minority group into the majority one. The model is validated using actually observed data from the case of Romansh speakers in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland.

This structured population model is built to address how migration (or intergroup cultural transmission), copying error, and time-averaging affect regional variation in a single selectively neutral discrete cultural trait under different mechanisms of cultural transmission. The model allows one to quantify cultural differentiation between groups within a structured population (at equilibrium) as well as between regional assemblages of time-averaged archaeological material at two different temporal scales (1,000 and 10,000 ticks). The archaeological assemblages begin to accumulate only after a “burn-in” period of 10,000 ticks. The model includes two different representations of copying error: the infinite variants model of copying error and the finite model of copying error. The model also allows the user to set the variant ceiling value for the trait in the case of the finite model of copying error.

This model simulates the spread of anti-vaccine sentiments in cyber and physical space and how it creates emergence of clusters of anti-vacciners, which eventually lead to higher probablity of disease outbreaks.

We compare three model estimates for the time and treatment requirements to eliminate HCV among HIV-positive MSM in Victoria, Australia: a compartmental model; an ABM parametrized by surveillance data; and an ABM with a more heterogeneous population.

EMMIT is an end-user developed agent-based simulation of malaria transmission. The simulation’s development is a case study demonstrating an approach for non-technical investigators to easily develop useful simulations of complex public health problems. We focused on malaria transmission, a major global public health problem, and insecticide resistance (IR), a major problem affecting malaria control. Insecticides are used to reduce transmission of malaria caused by the Plasmodium parasite that is spread by the Anopheles mosquito. However, the emergence and spread of IR in a mosquito population can diminish the insecticide’s effectiveness. IR results from mutations that produce behavioral changes or biochemical changes (such as detoxification enhancement, target site alterations) in the mosquito population that provide resistance to the insecticide. Evolutionary selection for the IR traits reduces the effectiveness of an insecticide favoring the resistant mosquito population. It has been suggested that biopesticides, and specifically those that are Late Life Acting (LLA), could address this problem. LLA insecticides exploit Plasmodium’s approximate 10-day extrinsic incubation period in the mosquito vector, a delay that limits malaria transmission to older infected mosquitoes. Since the proposed LLA insecticide delays mosquito death until after the exposed mosquito has a chance to produce several broods of offspring, reducing the selective pressure for resistance, it delays IR development and gives the insecticide longer effectivity. Such insecticides are designed to slow the evolution of IR thus maintaining their effectiveness for malaria control. For the IR problem, EMMIT shows that an LLA insecticide could work as intended, but its operational characteristics are critical, primarily the mean-time-to-death after exposure and the associated standard deviation. We also demonstrate the simulation’s extensibility to other malaria control measures, including larval source control and policies to mitigate the spread of IR. The simulation was developed using NetLogo as a case study of a simple but useful approach to public health research.

This model (CharRec) creates simulated charcoal records, based on differing natural and anthropogenic patterns of ignitions, charcoal dispersion, and deposition.