Our aim is to show effects of group living when only low-level cognition is assumed, such as pattern recognition needed for normal functioning, without assuming individuals have knowledge about others around them or warn them actively.
The model is of a group of vigilant foragers staying within a patch, under attack by a predator. The foragers use attentional scanning for predator detection, and flee after detection. This fleeing action constitutes a visual cue to danger, and can be received non-attentionally by others if it occurs within their limited visual field. The focus of this model is on the effectiveness of this non-attentional visual information reception.
A blind angle obstructing cue reception caused by behaviour can exist in front, morphology causes a blind angle in the back. These limitations are represented by two visual field shapes. The scan for predators is all-around, with distance-dependent detection; reception of flight cues is limited by visual field shape.
Initial parameters for instance: group sizes, movement, vision characteristics for predator detection and for cue reception. Captures (failure), number of times the information reached all individuals at the same time (All-fled, success), and several other effects of the visual settings are recorded.

Overview

Purpose

Modeling an economy with stable macro signals, that works as a benchmark for studying the effects of the agent activities, e.g. extortion, at the service of the elaboration of public policies..
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On July 20th, James Holmes committed a mass shooting in a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. The Aurora Colorado shooting was used as a test case to validate this framework for modeling mass shootings.

This model represents the flight paths of a flock of homing pigeons according to their flocking-, orientation- and leadership behaviour.

ViSA simulates the decision behaviors of different stakeholders showing demands for ecosystem services (ESS) in agricultural landscape. The lack of sufficient supply of ESSs triggers stakeholders to apply different management options to increase their supply. However, while attempting to reduce the supply-demand gap, conflicts arise among stakeholders due to the tradeoff nature of some ESS. ViSA investigates conditions and scenarios that can minimize such supply-demand gap while reducing the risk of conflicts by suggesting different mixes of management options and decision rules.

CoDMER v. 2.0 was parameterized with ethnographic data from organizations dealing with prescribed fire and seeding native plants, to advance theory on how collective decisions emerge in ecological restoration.

The model represents a set of social actors engaged into a collegiate (composed of representants of civil society and public sector) to manage the Southern Rural Territory of Sergipe (SRTS), created by two territorial public policies, the National Program for the Sustainable Development of Rural Territories (PRONAT) and the Program Territories of Citizenship (PTC) which aim at balancing power relations between social actors of Rural Territories. The main gola of these public policies is to empower the civil society engaged in the territory to enable them to negotiate with the traditional power (mainly majors). It was designed two models of the SRTS, one that represents the situation in 2012, and other that represents the social interdependencies in 2017. For each period it is possible to measure the capability and power of each modeled social actor and see whether it is observed the empowerment of the civil society or not.

The model proposes a translation of some Luhmann’s concepts (social sub-system, perturbation, dissipation, social communication and power) into a model using a stylized spatial-society as a metaphor of a Luhmann’s social subsystem. The model has been used to improve the social theory understanding and to evaluate the effect of different parameterization in the global stabilization and individual/social power distribution.

Brazil has initiated two territorial public policies for a rural sustainable development, the National Program for Sustainable Development of the Rural Territories (PRONAT) and Citizenship Territory Program (PTC). These public policies aims, as a condition for its effectiveness, the equilibrium of the power relations between actors which participate in the Collegiate for Territorial Development (CODETER) of each Rural Territory. Our research studies the hypotheses that, in the Rural Territories submitted to the PRONAT and PTC public policies, the power and reciprocity relations between actors engaged in the CODETER effectively have evolved in favor of the civil society representatives to the detriment of the public powers, notably the mayors.

The SocLab approach has been applied in two case studies and four models representing the Southern Rural Territory of Sergipe (TRSS) and the São Francisco Rural Territory (TRBSF) were designed for two referential periods, 2008-2012 and 2013-2017. These models were developed to evaluate the empowerment of the civil society in these rural territories due to thes two public policies, PRONAT and PTC.

The ABM model is designed to model the adaptability of farmers in DTIM. This model includes two groups of farmers and local government admins agents. Farmers with different levels, with low WP of DTIM, are looking for economic benefits and reduced irrigation and production costs. Meanwhile, the government is looking for strategic goals to maintain water resources’ sustainability. The local government admins employ incentives (subsidies in this study) to encourage farmers to DTIM. In addition, it is used as a tool for supervision and training farmers’ performance. Farmers are currently harvesting water resources with irrigation systems and different levels of technology, and they intend to provide short-term benefits. Farmers adjust the existing approach based on their knowledge of the importance of DTIM and propensity to increase WP and cost-benefit evaluation. DTIM has an initial implementation fee. Every farmer can increase WP by using government subsidies. If none of the farmers create optimal use of water resources, access to water resources will be threatened in the long term. This is considered a hypothetical cost for farmers who do not participate in DTIM. With DTIM, considering that local government admins’ facilities cover an essential part of implementation costs, farmers may think of profiting from local government admins’ facilities by selling that equipment, especially if the farmers in the following conditions may consider selling their developed irrigation equipment. In this case, the technology of their irrigation system will return to the state before development.
- When the threshold of farmers’ propensity to DTIM is low (for example, in the conditions of scarcity of access to sufficient training about the new irrigation system or its role in reducing the cost and sustainability of water resources)
- When the share of government subsidy is high, and as a result, the profit from the sale of equipment is attractive, especially in conditions of inflation.
- Finally, farmers’ honesty threshold should be reduced based on the positive experience of profit-seeking and deception among neighbors.
Increasing the share of government subsidies can encourage farmers to earn profits. Therefore, the government can help increase farmers’ profits by considering the assessment teams at different levels with DTIM training . local government admins evaluations monitor the behavior of farmers. If farmers sell their improved irrigation system for profit, they may be deprived of some local government admins’ services and the possibility of receiving subsidies again. Assessments The local government admins can increase farmers’ honesty. Next, the ABM model evaluates local government admins policies to achieve a suitable framework for water resources management in the Miandoab region.