Computational Model Library

The HERB model simulates the retrofit behavior of homeowners in a neighborhood. The model initially parameterizes a neighborhood and households with technical factors such as energy standard, the availability of subsidies, and neighbors’ retrofit activity. Then, these factors are translated into psychological variables such as perceived comfort gain, worry about affording the retrofit, and perceiving the current energy standard of the home as wasteful. These psychological variables moderate the transition between four different stages of deciding to retrofit, as suggested by a behavioral model specific to household energy retrofitting identified based on a large population survey in Norway. The transition between all stages eventually leads to retrofitting, which affects both the household’s technical factors and friends and neighbors, bringing the model “full circle”. The model assumes that the energy standard of the buildings deteriorates over time, forcing households to retrofit regularly to maintain a certain energy standard.

Because experiment datafiles are about 15GB, they are available at https://doi.org/10.18710/XOSAMD

The purpose of the model is to simulate the future growth of human settlements in the Nile river valley in Egypt. The model contains processes to mimic spatial patterns found in the case study region.

Peer reviewed Personnel decisions in the hierarchy

Smarzhevskiy Ivan | Published Fri Aug 19 08:23:17 2022

This is a model of organizational behavior in the hierarchy in which personnel decisions are made.
The idea of the model is that the hierarchy, busy with operations, is described by such characteristics as structure (number and interrelation of positions) and material, filling these positions (persons with their individual performance). A particular hierarchy is under certain external pressure (performance level requirement) and is characterized by the internal state of the material (the distribution of the perceptions of others over the ensemble of persons).
The World of the model is a four-level hierarchical structure, consisting of shuff positions of the top manager (zero level of the hierarchy), first-level managers who are subordinate to the top manager, second-level managers (subordinate to the first-level managers) and positions of employees (the third level of the hierarchy). ) subordinated to the second-level managers. Such a hierarchy is a tree, i.e. each position, with the exception of the position of top manager, has a single boss.
Agents in the model are persons occupying the specified positions, the number of persons is set by the slider (HumansQty). Personas have some operational performance (harisma, an unfortunate attribute name left over from the first edition of the model)) and a sense of other personas’ own perceptions. Performance values are distributed over the ensemble of persons according to the normal law with some mean value and variance.
The value of perception by agents of each other is positive or negative (implemented in the model as numerical values equal to +1 and -1). The distribution of perceptions over an ensemble of persons is implemented as a random variable specified by the probability of negative perception, the value of which is set by the control elements of the model interface. The numerical value of the probability equal to 0 corresponds to the case in which all persons positively perceive each other (the numerical value of the random variable is equal to 1, which corresponds to the positive perception of the other person by the individual).
The hierarchy is occupied with operational activity, the degree of intensity of which is set by the external parameter Difficulty. The level of productivity of each manager OAIndex is equal to the level of productivity of the department he leads and is the ratio of the sum of productivity of employees subordinate to the head to the level of complexity of the work Difficulty. An increase in the numerical value of Difficulty leads to a decrease in the OAIndex for all subdivisions of the hierarchy. The managerial meaning of the OAIndex indicator is the percentage of completion of the load specified for the hierarchy as a whole, i.e. the ratio of the actual performance of the structural subdivisions of the hierarchy to the required performance, the level of which is specified by the value of the Difficulty parameter.

The purpose of this model is to introduce a new individual decision-making method, BNE, into the ABM of pedestrian evacuation to properly simulate individual behaviours and movements. The model was built to balance between fast evacuation and high comfortability, which is a general conflict in the domain of pedestrian research. The interactions of pedestrians with their neighbours as well as surroundings was also considered in order to simulate a more realistic pedestrian evacuation. This model ultimately aims to explore the influences of BNE on pedestrian flows from various perspectives, especially pedestrian comfort and exit time in an emergency evacuation with different parameter configurations.

Three behavioural models were evaluated: Shortest Route (SR), Random Follow (RF) and BNE. The behavioural models were used to generate four moving patterns (i.e. model configurations): SR, RF, BNE mixed with SR, and BNE mixed with RF.

Peer reviewed The Archaeological Sampling Experimental Laboratory (tASEL)

Isaac Ullah | Published Fri Mar 11 21:14:43 2022 | Last modified Wed Jun 1 20:46:45 2022

The Archaeological Sampling Experimental Laboratory (tASEL) is an interactive tool for setting up and conducting experiments about sampling strategies for archaeological excavation, survey, and prospection.

Peer reviewed Routes & Rumours 0.1.1

Martin Hinsch Jakub Bijak Oliver Reinhardt | Published Tue Jul 12 09:40:45 2022

Routes & Rumours is an agent-based model of (forced) human migration. We model the formation of migration routes under the assumption that migrants have limited geographical knowledge concerning the transit area and rely to a large degree on information obtained from other migrants.

Zooarchaeological evidences indicate that rabbit hunting became prevalent during the Upper Palaeolithic in the Iberian Peninsula.

The purpose of the ABM is to test if warren hunting using nets as a collective strategy can explain the introduction of rabbits in the human diet in the Iberian Peninsula during this period. It is analyzed whether this hunting strategy has an impact on human diet breadth by affecting the relative abundance of other main taxa in the dietary spectrum.
Model validity is measured by comparing simulated diet breadth to the observed diet breadth in the zooarchaeological record.

The agent-based model is explicitly grounded on the Diet Breadth Model (DBM), from the Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT).

An agent model is presented that aims to capture the impact of cheap talk on collective action in a commons dilemma. The commons dilemma is represented as a spatially explicit renewable resource. Agent’s trust in others impacts the speed and harvesting rate, and trust is impacted by observed harvesting behavior and cheap talk. We calibrated the model using experimental data (DeCaro et al. 2021). The best fit to the data consists of a population with a small frequency of altruistic and selfish agents, and mostly conditional cooperative agents sensitive to inequality and cheap talk. This calibrated model provides an empirical test of the behavioral theory of collective action of Elinor Ostrom and Humanistic Rational Choice Theory.

Identity and meat eating behaviour

Jiaqi Ge | Published Thu Sep 29 16:51:47 2022

Using data from the British Social Attitude Survey, we develop an agent-based model to study the effect of social influence on the spread of meat-eating behaviour in the British population.

Cooperation is essential for all domains of life. Yet, ironically, it is intrinsically vulnerable to exploitation by cheats. Hence, an explanatory necessity spurs many evolutionary biologists to search for mechanisms that could support cooperation. In general, cooperation can emerge and be maintained when cooperators are sufficiently interacting with themselves. This communication provides a kind of assortment and reciprocity. The most crucial and common mechanisms to achieve that task are kin selection, spatial structure, and enforcement (punishment). Here, we used agent-based simulation models to investigate these pivotal mechanisms against conditional defector strategies. We concluded that the latter could easily violate the former and take over the population. This surprising outcome may urge us to rethink the evolution of cooperation, as it illustrates that maintaining cooperation may be more difficult than previously thought. Moreover, empirical applications may support these theoretical findings, such as invading the cooperator population of pathogens by genetically engineered conditional defectors, which could be a potential therapy for many incurable diseases.

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