The model is designed to analyse the effects of mitigation measures on the European brown hare (Lepus europaeus), which is directly affected by ongoing land use change and has experienced widespread decline throughout Europe since the 1960s. As an input, we use two 4×4 km large model landscapes, which were generated by a landscape generator based on real field sizes and crop proportions and differed in average field size and crop composition. The crops grown annually are evaluated in terms of forage suitability, breeding suitability and crop richness for the hare. Six mitigation scenarios are implemented, defined by a 10 % increase in: (1) mixed silphie, (2) miscanthus, (3) grass-clover ley, (4) alfalfa, (5) set-aside, and (6) general crop richness. The model shows that that both landscape configuration and composition have a significant effect on hare population development, which responds particularly strongly to compositional changes.

Aroused public opinion has led to public debates on social responsibility issues in food supply chains. This model based op opinion dynamics and the linkages between involved actors simulates the public debate leading to the transitions.

This is a model of the occurrence of disorganization and its impact on individual goal setting and problem-solving. This model therefore, explores the effects of disorganization on goal achievement.

The (cultural) evolution of cooperative breeding in harsh environments.

This model describes and analyses the Travel-Tour Case study.

The current rate of production and consumption of meat poses a problem both to peoples’ health and to the environment. This work aims to develop a simulation of peoples’ meat consumption behaviour in Britain using agent-based modelling. The agents represent individual consumers. The key variables that characterise agents include sex, age, monthly income, perception of the living cost, and concerns about the impact of meat on the environment, health, and animal welfare. A process of peer influence is modelled with respect to the agents’ concerns. Influence spreads across two eating networks (i.e. co-workers and household members) depending on the time of day, day of the week, and agents’ employment status. Data from a representative sample of British consumers is used to empirically ground the model. Different experiments are run simulating interventions of application of social marketing campaigns and a rise in price of meat. The main outcome is the average weekly consumption of meat per consumer. A secondary outcome is the likelihood of eating meat.

Ecosystems are among the most complex structures studied. They comprise elements that seem both stable and contingent. The stability of these systems depends on interactions among their evolutionary history, including the accidents of organisms moving through the landscape and microhabitats of the earth, and the biotic and abiotic conditions in which they occur. When ecosystems are stable, how is that achieved? Here we look at ecosystem stability through a computer simulation model that suggests that it may depend on what constrains the system and how those constraints are structured. Specifically, if the constraints found in an ecological community form a closed loop, that allows particular kinds of feedback may give structure to the ecosystem processes for a period of time. In this simulation model, we look at how evolutionary forces act in such a way these closed constraint loops may form. This may explain some kinds of ecosystem stability. This work will also be valuable to ecological theorists in understanding general ideas of stability in such systems.

We study cultural dissemination in the context of an Axelrod-like agent-based model describing the spread of cultural traits across a society, with an added element of social influence. This modification produces absorbing states exhibiting greater variation in number and size of distinct cultural regions compared to the original Axelrod model, and we identify the mechanism responsible for this amplification in heterogeneity. We develop several new metrics to quantitatively characterize the heterogeneity and geometric qualities of these absorbing states. Additionally, we examine the dynamical approach to absorbing states in both our Social Influence Model as well as the Axelrod Model, which not only yields interesting insights into the differences in behavior of the two models over time, but also provides a more comprehensive view into the behavior of Axelrod’s original model. The quantitative metrics introduced in this paper have broad potential applicability across a large variety of agent-based cultural dissemination models.

The model is suitable to investigate the effects of different characteristics of apprenticeship programmes both in historical and contemporary societies. The model is built considering five societies, using an agent-based simulation model, we identified six main characteristics which impact the success of an apprenticeship programme in a society, which we measured by considering three parameters, namely the number of skilled agents produced by the apprenticeships, programme completion, and the contribution of programmes in the Gross Domestic Income (GDI) of the society. We investigate different definitions for success of an apprenticeship and some hypothetical societies to test some common beliefs about apprenticeships performance. The model also shows the number of unemployed agents given their work-based skills, wages, and the number of small and large companies who participate in training agents. The model enables exploring the impact of parameters, such as initial wages and the number of training years, along with the stated policies on the system.

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