The Soy2Grow ABM aims to simulate the adoption of soybean production in Flanders, Belgium. The model primarily considers two types of agents as farmers: 1) arable and 2) dairy farmers. Each farmer, based on its type, assesses the feasibility of adopting soybean cultivation. The feasibility assessment depends on many interrelated factors, including price, production costs, yield, disease, drought (i.e., environmental stress), social pressure, group formations, learning and skills, risk-taking, subsidies, target profit margins, tolerance to bad experiences, etc. Moreover, after adopting soybean production, agents will reassess their performance. If their performance is unsatisfactory, an agent may opt out of soy production. Therefore, one of the main outcomes to look for in the model is the number of adopters over time.

The main agents are farmers. Generally, factors influencing farmers’ decision-making are divided into seven main areas: 1) external environmental factors, 2) cooperation and learning (with slight differences depending on whether they are arable or dairy farmers), 3) crop-specific factors, 4) economics, 5) support frameworks, 6) behavioral factors, and 7) the role of mobile toasters (applicable only to dairy farmers).
Moreover, factors not only influence decision-making but also interact with each other. Specifically, external environmental factors (i.e., stress) will result in lower yield and quality (protein content). The reducing effect, identified during participatory workshops, can reach 50 %. Skills can grow and improve yield; however, their growth has a limit and follows different learning curves depending on how individualistic a farmer is. During participatory workshops, it was identified that, contrary to cooperative farmers, individualistic farmers may learn faster and reach their limits more quickly. Furthermore, subsidies directly affect revenues and profit margins; however, their impact may disappear when they are removed. In the case of dairy farmers, mobile toasters play an important role, adding toasting and processing costs to those producing soy for their animal feed consumption.
Last but not least, behavioral factors directly influence the final adoption decision. For example, high risk-taking farmers may adopt faster, whereas more conservative farmers may wait for their neighbors to adopt first. Farmers may evaluate their success based on their own targets and may also consider other crops rather than soy.

Purpose of the model is to perform a “virtual experiment” to test the predator satiation hypothesis, advanced in literature to explain the mast seeding phenomenon.

A global model of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic. It can be run to match history or explore counterfactual questions about the influence of World War I on the dynamics of the epidemic. Explores two theories of the location of the initial infection.

This is the final version of the model. To simulate the normative dynamics we used the EmIL (EMergence In the Loop) Framework which was kindly provided by Ulf Lotzmann. http://cfpm.org/EMIL-D5.1.pdf

The model implements a model that reflects features of a rural hill village in Nepal. Key features of the model include water storage, social capital and migration of household members who then send remittances back to the village.

Captures interplay between fixed ethnic markers and culturally evolved tags in the evolution of cooperation and ethnocentrism. Agents evolve cultural tags, behavioural game strategies and in-group definitions. Ethnic markers are fixed.

An ABM to simulate the behaviour of households within a village and observe the emerging properties of the system in terms of food security. The model quantifies food availability, access, utilisation and stability.

We propose an agent-based model where a fixed finite population of tagged agents play iteratively the Nash demand game in a regular lattice. The model extends the bargaining model by Axtell, Epstein and Young.

While the world’s total urban population continues to grow, this growth is not equal. Some cities are declining, resulting in urban shrinkage which is now a global phenomenon. Many problems emerge due to urban shrinkage including population loss, economic depression, vacant properties and the contraction of housing markets. To explore this issue, this paper presents an agent-based model stylized on spatially explicit data of Detroit Tri-county area, an area witnessing urban shrinkage. Specifically, the model examines how micro-level housing trades impact urban shrinkage by capturing interactions between sellers and buyers within different sub-housing markets. The stylized model results highlight not only how we can simulate housing transactions but the aggregate market conditions relating to urban shrinkage (i.e., the contraction of housing markets). To this end, the paper demonstrates the potential of simulation to explore urban shrinkage and potentially offers a means to test polices to alleviate this issue.

A simple model that aims to demonstrate the influence of agri-environmental payments on land-use patterns in a virtual landscape. The landscape consists of grassland (which can be managed extensively or intensively) and a river. Agri-environmental payments are provided for extensive management of grassland. Additionally, there are boni for (a) extensive grassland in proximity of the river; and (b) clusters (“agglomerations”) of extensive grassland. The farmers, who own randomly distributed grassland patches, make decisions either on the basis of simple income maximization or they maximize only up to an income threshold beyond which they seize making changes in management. The resulting landscape pattern is evaluated by means of three simple models for (a) agricultural yield, (b) habitat/biodiversity and (c) water quality. The latter two correspond to the two boni. The model has been developed within a small project called Aligning Agent-Based Modelling with Multi-Objective Land-Use Allocation (ALABAMA).