Grasslands have a large share of the world’s land cover and their sustainable management is important for the protection and provisioning of grassland ecosystem services. The question of how to manage grassland sustainably is becoming increasingly important, especially in view of climate change, which on the one hand extends the vegetation period (and thus potentially allows use intensification) and on the other hand causes yield losses due to droughts. Fertilization plays an important role in grassland management and decisions are usually made at farm level. Data on fertilizer application rates are crucial for an accurate assessment of the effects of grassland management on ecosystem services. However, these are generally not available on farm/field scale. To close this gap, we present an agent-based model for Fertilization In Grasslands (FertIG). Based on animal, land-use, and cutting data, the model estimates grassland yields and calculates field-specific amounts of applied organic and mineral nitrogen on grassland (and partly cropland). Furthermore, the model considers different legal requirements (including fertilization ordinances) and nutrient trade among farms. FertIG was applied to a grassland-dominated region in Bavaria, Germany comparing the effects of changes in the fertilization ordinance as well as nutrient trade. The results show that the consideration of nutrient trade improves organic fertilizer distribution and leads to slightly lower Nmin applications. On a regional scale, recent legal changes (fertilization ordinance) had limited impacts. Limiting the maximum applicable amount of Norg to 170 kg N/ha fertilized area instead of farm area as of 2020 hardly changed fertilizer application rates. No longer considering application losses in the calculation of fertilizer requirements had the strongest effects, leading to lower supplementary Nmin applications. The model can be applied to other regions in Germany and, with respective adjustments, in Europe. Generally, it allows comparing the effects of policy changes on fertilization management at regional, farm and field scale.

SimAdapt: An individual-based genetic model for simulating landscape management impacts on populations

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.

A simulated approach for Personal Carbon Trading, for figuring out what effects it might have if it will be implemented in the real world. We use an artificial population with some empirical data from international literature and basic assumptions about heterogeneous energy demand. The model is not to be used as simulating the actual behavior of real populations, but a toy model to test the effects of differences in various factors such as number of agents, energy price, price of allowances, etc. It is important to adapt the model for specific countries as carbon footprint and energy demand determines the relative success of PCT.

Status-power dynamics on a playground, resulting in a status landscape with a gender status gap. Causal: individual (beauty, kindness, power), binary (rough-and-tumble; has-been-nice) or prior popularity (status). Cultural: acceptability of fighting.

Criminal organizations operate in complex changing environments. Being flexible and dynamic allows criminal networks not only to exploit new illicit opportunities but also to react to law enforcement attempts at disruption, enhancing the persistence of these networks over time. Most studies investigating network disruption have examined organizational structures before and after the arrests of some actors but have disregarded groups’ adaptation strategies.
MADTOR simulates drug trafficking and dealing activities by organized criminal groups and their reactions to law enforcement attempts at disruption. The simulation relied on information retrieved from a detailed court order against a large-scale Italian drug trafficking organization (DTO) and from the literature.
The results showed that the higher the proportion of members arrested, the greater the challenges for DTOs, with higher rates of disrupted organizations and long-term consequences for surviving DTOs. Second, targeting members performing specific tasks had different impacts on DTO resilience: targeting traffickers resulted in the highest rates of DTO disruption, while targeting actors in charge of more redundant tasks (e.g., retailers) had smaller but significant impacts. Third, the model examined the resistance and resilience of DTOs adopting different strategies in the security/efficiency trade-off. Efficient DTOs were more resilient, outperforming secure DTOs in terms of reactions to a single, equal attempt at disruption. Conversely, secure DTOs were more resistant, displaying higher survival rates than efficient DTOs when considering the differentiated frequency and effectiveness of law enforcement interventions on DTOs having different focuses in the security/efficiency trade-off.
Overall, the model demonstrated that law enforcement interventions are often critical events for DTOs, with high rates of both first intention (i.e., DTOs directly disrupted by the intervention) and second intention (i.e., DTOs terminating their activities due to the unsustainability of the intervention’s short-term consequences) culminating in dismantlement. However, surviving DTOs always displayed a high level of resilience, with effective strategies in place to react to threatening events and to continue drug trafficking and dealing.

A proof-of-concept agent-based model ‘SimDrink’, which simulates a population of 18-25 year old heavy alcohol drinkers on a night out in Melbourne to provide a means for conducting policy experiments to inform policy decisions.

FIBE represents a simple fishery model. Fish that reproduce and fisher with different fishing styles that fish as their main source of income. The aim of the model is to reflect the different fishing behaviours as described and observed in the (Swedish) Baltic Sea fishery and explore the consequences of different approximations of human/fisher behaviour in under different environmental and managerial scenarios.

The overarching aim is to advance the incorporation and understanding of human behaviour (diversity) in fisheries research and management. In particular focusing on insights from social (fishery) science of fisher behaviour.

This MAS simulates the traffic of Barcelona Eixample. Uses a centralized AI system in order to control the traffic lights. Car agents are reactive and have no awareness of the intelligence of the system. They (try to) avoid collisions.

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.