The three-day participatory workshop organized by the TISSS Lab had 20 participants who were academics in different career stages ranging from university student to professor. For each of the five games, the participants had to move between tables according to some pre-specified rules. After the workshop both the participant’s perception of the games’ complexities and the participants’ satisfaction with the games were recorded.

In order to obtain additional objective measures for the games’ complexities, these games were also simulated using this simulation model here. Therefore, the simulation model is an as-accurate-as-possible reproduction of the workshop games: it has 20 participants moving between 5 different tables. The rules that specify who moves when vary from game to game. Just to get an idea, Game 3 has the rule: “move if you’re sitting next to someone who is waring white or no socks”.

An exact description of the workshop games and the associated simulation models can be found in the paper “The relation between perceived complexity and happiness with decision situations: searching for objective measures in social simulation games”.

SiFlo is an ABM dedicated to simulate flood events in urban areas. It considers the water flowing and the reaction of the inhabitants. The inhabitants would be able to perform different actions regarding the flood: protection (protect their house, their equipment and furniture…), evacuation (considering traffic model), get and give information (considering imperfect knowledge), etc. A special care was taken to model the inhabitant behavior: the inhabitants should be able to build complex reasoning, to have emotions, to follow or not instructions, to have incomplete knowledge about the flood, to interfere with other inhabitants, to find their way on the road network. The model integrates the closure of roads and the danger a flooded road can represent. Furthermore, it considers the state of the infrastructures and notably protection infrastructures as dyke. Then, it allows to simulate a dyke breaking.
The model intends to be generic and flexible whereas provide a fine geographic description of the case study. In this perspective, the model is able to directly import GIS data to reproduce any territory. The following sections expose the main elements of the model.

This model is an agent-based simulation written in Python 2.7, which simulates the cost of social care in an ageing UK population. The simulation incorporates processes of population change which affect the demand for and supply of social care, including health status, partnership formation, fertility and mortality. Fertility and mortality rates are drawn from UK population data, then projected forward to 2050 using the methods developed by Lee and Carter 1992.

The model demonstrates that rising life expectancy combined with lower birthrates leads to growing social care costs across the population. More surprisingly, the model shows that the oft-proposed intervention of raising the retirement age has limited utility; some reductions in costs are attained initially, but these reductions taper off beyond age 70. Subsequent work has enhanced and extended this model by adding more detail to agent behaviours and familial relationships.

The version of the model provided here produces outputs in a format compatible with the GEM-SA uncertainty quantification software by Kennedy and O’Hagan. This allows sensitivity analyses to be performed using Gaussian Process Emulation.

An ABM, derived from a case study and a series of surveys with greenhouse growers in the Westland, Netherlands. Experiments using this model showshow that the greenhouse horticulture industry displays diversity, adaptive complexity and an uneven distribution, which all suggest that the industry is an evolving system.

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.

FIsheries Simulation with Human COmplex DEcision-making (FISHCODE) is an agent-based model to depict and analyze current and future spatio-temporal dynamics of three German fishing fleets in the southern North Sea. Every agent (fishing vessel) makes daily decisions about if, what, and how long to fish. Weather, fuel and fish prices, as well as the actions of their colleagues influence agents’ decisions. To combine behavioral theories and enable agents to make dynamic decision, we implemented the Consumat approach, a framework in which agents’ decisions vary in complexity and social engagement depending on their satisfaction and uncertainty. Every agent has three satisfactions and two uncertainties representing different behavioral aspects, i.e. habitual behavior, profit maximization, competition, conformism, and planning insecurity. Availability of extensive information on fishing trips allowed us to parameterize many model parameters directly from data, while others were calibrated using pattern oriented modelling. Model validation showed that spatial and temporal aggregated ABM outputs were in realistic ranges when compared to observed data. Our ABM hence represents a tool to assess the impact of the ever growing challenges to North Sea fisheries and provides insight into fisher behavior beyond profit maximization.

Designed to capture the evolutionary forces of global society.

An agent-based model which explores Creativity and Urban Development

The DITCH model has been developed to investigate partner selection processes, focusing on individual preferences, opportunities for contact, and group size to uncover how these may lead to differential rates of inter-­ethnic marriage.

This abstract model explores the emergence of altruistic behavior in networked societies. The model allows users to experiment with a number of population-level parameters to better understand what conditions contribute to the emergence of altruism.