Ecology - Natural Resources Management (Community-based management)

I worked on natural resources management modelling in STELLA. I developed a technical and scientific model to analyze soil, climate and biological conditions to explain how Bamboo ecosystem works and how people in Cundinamarca, Colombia could focus on a sustainable model for use and manage forestry resources.
Also, I worked on the seventh framework program named: Community-based management of Environmental Challenges in Latin America -COMET-LA-. The project built a learning arena with scientists, civil society and government to identify sustainable models for governance of natural resources in social-ecological systems located in a rural context from Colombia, México and Argentina.

I am interesting in research on Modelling of governance and Community-based management of natural resources.

Agent-based modelling
Modal choice simulation
Multi-agent system
Behavioural theory

The big picture question driving my research is how do complex systems of interactions among individuals / agents result in emergent properties and how do those emergent properties feedback to affect individual / agent decisions. I have explored this big picture question in a number of different contexts including the evolution of cooperation, suburban sprawl, traffic patterns, financial systems, land-use and land-change in urban systems, and most recently social media. For all of these explorations, I employ the tools of complex systems, most importantly agent-based modeling.

My current research focus is on understanding the dynamics of social media, examining how concepts like information, authority, influence and trust diffuse in these new media formats. This allows us to ask questions such as who do users trust to provide them with the information that they want? Which entities have the greatest influence on social media users? How do fads and fashions arise in social media? What happens when time is critical to the diffusion process such as an in a natural disaster? I have employed agent-based modeling, machine learning, geographic information systems, and network analysis to understand and start to answer these questions.

Jorge is a PhD candidate of System Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. His research activities are focused on applying agent-based models on three major areas: 1) financial markets to study the self-regulation capability of artificial markets with interacting investors and credit rating agencies; 2) the efficiency of road networks when users have access to real-time information and are able to adjust their behavior to current conditions; 3) failure probability of nuclear waste containers due to microbial- and chemical-driven corrosion.

Agent-based models of human behaviour, from cognitive modelling through to cognitively-rich social simulation.

I am a first year PhD student interested in applying ABM to understand the effect of formalizing property rights on the governance of land and natural resources.

My research is focused on the security of water, food, and energy resources as well as natural resources planning and managaement. A lot of my work involves the integration of physical and social science research.