Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study
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The Krasnow Institute seeks to expand understanding of mind, brain, and intelligence by conducting research at the intersection of the separate fields of cognitive psychology, neurobiology, and the computer-driven study of artificial intelligence and complex adaptive systems. These separate disciplines increasingly overlap and promise progressively deeper insight into human thought processes. The Institute also examines how new insights from cognitive science research can be applied for human benefit in the areas of mental health, neurological disease, education, and computer design.
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Browsing Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study by Subject "Agent-based model"
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Item An Agent-Based Model of Climate Change and Conflict among Pastoralists in East Africa(International Environmental Modelling and Software Society (iEMSs), 2010) Hailegiorgis, A.B.; Kennedy, W.G.; Balan, G.C.; Bassett, J.K.; Gulden, T.Presented is an agent-based model of human-environment interaction and conflict in East Africa using the MASON agent-based simulation environment. The model focuses on the complex interaction of pastoral groups with their environment and other emerging external actors. The model supports the observation that increased seasonal rainfall variability and droughts create tremendous stress on pastoralists groups and challenges their long-term resilience and adaptive response mechanisms.Item An Agent-Based Model of Conflict in East Africa and the Effect of Watering Holes(Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation, 2010-03) Kennedy, W.G.; Hailegiorgis, A.B.; Rouleau, M.; Bassett, J.K.; Coletti, M.; Balan, G.C.; Gulden, T.An agent-based model conflict between herdsmen in east Africa using the MASON agent-based simulation environment is presented. Herders struggle to keep their herds fed and watered in a GIS-based, spatially diverse environment with data-driven seasonal cycles. The model produces realistic carrying capacity dynamics and basically plausible conflict dynamics. With the rather basic set of behaviors, herders come into conflict over limited resources and one clan is eventually eliminated. We find that greater environmental scarcity leads to faster domination by a single group. At the same time, we note that there is tremendous variability from run to run in the rate and timing of the transition from a conflict-prone, multi-clan environment to hegemony of a single group.Item Comparing Agent-Based Computational Simulation Models in Cross-Cultural Research(SAGE, 2011-05) Cioffi-Revilla, ClaudioMel Ember was co-Principal Investigator in the Mason-HRAF Joint Project on Eastern Africa, a multiyear project aimed at developing and analyzing advanced computational agent-based models of human societies across 10 countries and 12 ecosystems. A major unsolved challenge in this kind of social science research is to devise a systematic way to compare, contrast, and communicate different models of social dynamics along relevant dimensions and characteristics, given the inherent complexity of most computational agent-based models. This article proposes a viable systematic framework for comparing models and illustrates its application using some of the models that Mel helped inspire and develop as senior project participant.Item Conflict in Complex Socio-Natural Systems: Using Agent-Based Modeling to Understand the Behavioral Roots of Social Unrest within the Mandera Triangle(Human Behavior-Computational Modeling and Interoperability Conference, 2009-06) Rouleau, Mark; Coletti, Mark; Bassett, Jeffrey K.; Hailegiorgis, Atesmachew B.; Gulden, Tim; Kennedy, William G.Conflict resolution research relies upon a deep understanding of human behavior within highly complex socionatural systems. Scholars must isolate the source of conflict among individuals reacting to the feedback of changing socionatural conditions. Fortunately, the oft-obscured roots of conflict typically surface at critical points of change within the system. We use the Mandera Triangle region of East Africa as an example of this surfacing of behavioral drivers. Our research fuses a wide range of backgrounds to construct a simulation model of Mandera and to gain a better understanding of the roots of human behavior in relation to social conflict.Item Evolutionary Computation and Agent-based Modeling: Biologically-inspired Approaches for Understanding Complex Social Systems(Kluwer, 2012-06-18) Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio; De Jong, Kenneth; Bassett, JeffreyComputational social science in general, and social agent-based modeling (ABM) simulation in particular, are challenged by modeling and analyzing complex adaptive social systems with emergent properties that are hard to understand in terms of components, even when the organization of component agents is know. Evolutionary computation (EC) is a mature field that provides a bio-inspired approach and a suite of techniques that are applicable to and provide new insights on complex adaptive social systems. This paper demonstrates a combined EC-ABM approach illustrated through the RebeLand model of a simple but complete polity system. Results highlight tax rates and frequency of public issue that stress society as significant features in phase transitions between stable and unstable governance regimes. These initial results sug- gest further applications of EC to ABM in terms of multi-population models with heterogeneous agents, multi-objective optimization, dynamic environments, and evolving executable objects for modeling social change.Item MASON HerderLand: Origins of Conflict in East Africa(2010-11) Kennedy, W.G.; Hailegiorgis, A.B.; Rouleau, M.; Bassett, J.K.; Coletti, M.; Balan, G.C.; Gulden, T.; Cioffi-Revilla, C.HerderLand is an agent-based model of the people and environment in the Mandera Triangle area of Eastern Africa developed to address the causes of conflict in the area. With it we have conducted three sets of experiments varying the major environmental parameters we believed would affect conflict in the region.