The model simulates flood damages and its propagation through a cooperative, productive, farming system, characterized as a star-type network, where all elements in the system are connected one to each other through a central element.

The model, presented here, is a re-implementation of the Pepper and Smuts’ model : - Pepper, J.W. and B.B. Smuts. 2000. “The evolution of cooperation in an ecological context: an agent-based model”. Pp. 45-76 in T.A. Kohler and G.J. Gumerman, eds. Dynamics of human and primate societies: agent-based modeling of social and spatial processes. Oxford University Press, Oxford. - Pepper, J.W. and B.B. Smuts. 2002. “Assortment through Environmental Feedback”. American Naturalist, 160: 205-213 […]

This model is based on the Narragansett Bay, RI recreational fishery. The two types of agents are piscivorous fish and fishers (shore and boat fishers are separate “breeds”). Each time step represents one week. Open season is weeks 1-26, assuming fishing occurs during half the year. At each weekly time step, fish agents grow, reproduce, and die. Fisher agents decide whether or not to fish based on their current satisfaction level, and those that do go fishing attempt to catch a fish. If they are successful, they decide whether to keep or release the fish. In our publication, this model was linked to an Ecopath with Ecosim food web model where the commercial harvest of forage fish affected the biomass of piscivorous fish - which then became the starting number of piscivorous fish for this ABM. The number of fish caught in a season of this ABM was converted to a fishing pressure and input back into the food web model.

An ABM of changes in individuals’ lifestyles which considers their
evolving behavioural choices. Individuals have a set of environmental behavioural traits that spread through a fixed Watts–Strogatz graph via social interactions with their neighbours. These exchanges are mediated by transmission biases informing from whom an individual learns and
how much attention is paid. The influence of individuals on each other is a function of their similarity in environmental identity, where we represent environmental identity computationally by aggregating past agent attitudes towards multiple environmentally related behaviours. To perform a behaviour, agents must both have
a sufficiently positive attitude toward a behaviour and overcome a corresponding threshold. This threshold
structure, where the desire to perform a behaviour does not equal its enactment, allows for a lack of coherence
between attitudes and actual emissions. This leads to a disconnect between what people believe and what
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Discriminators who have limited tolerance for helping dissimilar others are necessary for the evolution of costly cooperation in a one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma. Existing research reports that trust in

This is a model of innovation implementation inside an organization. It characterizes an innovation as a set of distributed and technically interdependent tasks performed by a number of different and socially interconnected frontline workers.

The purpose of this model is to examine equity and efficiency in crop production across a system of irrigated farms, as a function of maintenance costs, assessed water fees, and the capacity of farmers to trade water rights among themselves.

CPNorm is a model of a community of harvesters using a common pool resource where adhering to the optimal extraction level has become a social norm. The model can be used to explore the robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons.

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.

Due to the role of education in promoting social status and facilitating upward social mobility, individuals and their families spare no effort to pursue better educational opportunities, especially in countries where education is highly competitive.

In China, the enrollment of senior high schools and universities mainly follows a ranking system based on students’ scores in national entrance exams (Zhongkao and Gaokao). Typically, students with higher scores have priority in choosing schools and endeavor to get into better senior high schools to increase their chances of entering a prestigious university.

However, students can only select “better” senior high schools based on their average Gaokao grades, which are strongly influenced by the initial performance (Zhongkao grades) of enrolled students. The true quality indicator of school education (schooling effect, defined as the grade improvement achieved through education at the senior high school) is unknowable. This raises the first question: will school rankings reflect the real educational quality of schools over decades of educational competition, or merely the initial quality of the students they enroll?

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