Category: GeoMason

New Paper: Synthetic Populations with Social Networks

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When developing geographically explicit agent-based models, one thing we spend a lot of time on is building synthetic populations and then linking the agents in the synthetic population to each other.  To overcome this issue we have a new paper pu…

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ABM Applications, ABM Examples, Agent Based Models, Disasters, Disease, GeoMason, Java, MASON, Microsimulation, python, Traffic Models

New Paper: Synthetic Populations with Social Networks

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When developing geographically explicit agent-based models, one thing we spend a lot of time on is building synthetic populations and then linking the agents in the synthetic population to each other.  To overcome this issue we have a new paper pu…

Continue reading »
ABM Applications, ABM Examples, Agent Based Models, Disasters, Disease, GeoMason, Java, MASON, Microsimulation, python, Traffic Models

Modeling the Emergence of Riots: A Geosimulation Approach

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As you might of guessed the paper is about riots but that is not all. In the paper we have a highly detailed cognitive model implemented through the PECS (Physical conditions, Emotional state, Cognitive capabilities, and Social status) framework based around identity theory. The purpose of the model (and paper) is to explore how the unique socioeconomic variables underlying Kibera, a slum in Nairobi, coupled with local interactions of its residents, and the spread of a rumor, may trigger a riot such as those seen in 2007. 
In order to explore this question from the “bottom up” we have developed a novel agent-based model that integrates social network analysis (SNA) and geographic information systems (GIS) for this purpose. In the paper we argue that this integration facilitates the modeling of dynamic social networks created through the agents’ daily interactions. The GIS is used to develop a realistic environment for agents to move and interact that includes a road network and points of interest which impact their daily lives.
Below is the abstract and a summary of its highlights in order to give you a sense of what our research contribution is. In addition to this we also provide some images either from the paper itself or the from Overview, Design Concepts, and Details (ODD) protocol. Finally at the bottom of this post you can see one of the simulation runs, details of where the model can be downloaded along with the full citation.

Paper Abstract:

Immediately after the 2007 Kenyan election results were announced, the country erupted in protest. Riots were particularly severe in Kibera, an informal settlement located within the nations capital, Nairobi. Through the lens of geosimulation, an agent-based model is integrated with social network analysis and geographic information systems to explore how the environment and local interactions underlying Kibera, combined with an external trigger, such as a rumor, led to the emergence of riots. We ground our model on empirical data of Kibera’s geospatial landscape, heterogeneous population, and daily activities of its residents. In order to effectively construct a model of riots, however, we must have an understanding of human behavior, especially that related to an individual’s need for identity and the role rumors play on a person’s decision to riot. This provided the foundation to develop the agents’ cognitive model, which created a feedback system between the agents’ activities in physical space and interactions in social space. Results showed that youth are more susceptible to rioting. Systematically increasing education and employment opportunities, however, did not have simple linear effects on rioting, or even on quality of life with respect to income and activities. The situation is more complex. By linking agent-based modeling, social network analysis, and geographic information systems we were able to develop a cognitive framework for the agents, better represent human behavior by modeling the interactions that occur over both physical and social space, and capture the nonlinear, reinforcing nature of the emergence and dissolution of riots.

Keywords: agent-based modeling; geographic information systems; social network analysis; riots; social influence; rumor propagation.

Paper Highlights:

  • An agent-based model integrates geographic information systems and social network analysis to model the emergence of riots. 
  • The physical environment and agent attributes are developed using empirical data, including GIS and socioeconomic data. 
  • The agent’s cognitive framework allowed for modeling their activities in physical space and interactions in social space. 
  • Through the integration of the three techniques, we were able to capture the complex, nonlinear nature of riots. 
  • Results show that youth are most vulnerable, and, increasing education and employment has nonlinear affects on rioting.

The high-level UML diagram of the model
A high-level representation of the model’s agent behavior incorporated into the PECS framework

An example of the evolution of social networks of ten Residents across the first two days of a simulation run.

The movie below shows the agent-based model which explores ethnic clashes in the Kenyan slum. The environment is made up of households, businesses, and service facilities (such data comes from OpenStreetMap). Agents within the model use a transportation network to move across the environment. As agents go about their daily activities, they interact with other agents – building out an evolving social network. Agents seek to meet their identity standard. Failure to reach their identity standard increases the agents frustration which can lead to an aggressive response (i.e. moving from blue to red color) such as rioting.

As with many of our models, we provide the data, model code and detailed model description in the form of the ODD protocol for others to use, learn more or to extend. Click here for more information.

Full Reference:

Pires, B. and Crooks, A.T. (2017), Modeling the Emergence of Riots: A Geosimulation Approach, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 61: 66-80. (pdf)

As normal, any thoughts or comments are most appreciated.
 

Continue reading »
ABM, ABM Examples, GeoMason, GIS, MASON, Slums, SNA, Social Networks

Modeling the Emergence of Riots: A Geosimulation Approach

Posted on by
As you might of guessed the paper is about riots but that is not all. In the paper we have a highly detailed cognitive model implemented through the PECS (Physical conditions, Emotional state, Cognitive capabilities, and Social status) framework based around identity theory. The purpose of the model (and paper) is to explore how the unique socioeconomic variables underlying Kibera, a slum in Nairobi, coupled with local interactions of its residents, and the spread of a rumor, may trigger a riot such as those seen in 2007. 
In order to explore this question from the “bottom up” we have developed a novel agent-based model that integrates social network analysis (SNA) and geographic information systems (GIS) for this purpose. In the paper we argue that this integration facilitates the modeling of dynamic social networks created through the agents’ daily interactions. The GIS is used to develop a realistic environment for agents to move and interact that includes a road network and points of interest which impact their daily lives.
Below is the abstract and a summary of its highlights in order to give you a sense of what our research contribution is. In addition to this we also provide some images either from the paper itself or the from Overview, Design Concepts, and Details (ODD) protocol. Finally at the bottom of this post you can see one of the simulation runs, details of where the model can be downloaded along with the full citation.

Paper Abstract:

Immediately after the 2007 Kenyan election results were announced, the country erupted in protest. Riots were particularly severe in Kibera, an informal settlement located within the nations capital, Nairobi. Through the lens of geosimulation, an agent-based model is integrated with social network analysis and geographic information systems to explore how the environment and local interactions underlying Kibera, combined with an external trigger, such as a rumor, led to the emergence of riots. We ground our model on empirical data of Kibera’s geospatial landscape, heterogeneous population, and daily activities of its residents. In order to effectively construct a model of riots, however, we must have an understanding of human behavior, especially that related to an individual’s need for identity and the role rumors play on a person’s decision to riot. This provided the foundation to develop the agents’ cognitive model, which created a feedback system between the agents’ activities in physical space and interactions in social space. Results showed that youth are more susceptible to rioting. Systematically increasing education and employment opportunities, however, did not have simple linear effects on rioting, or even on quality of life with respect to income and activities. The situation is more complex. By linking agent-based modeling, social network analysis, and geographic information systems we were able to develop a cognitive framework for the agents, better represent human behavior by modeling the interactions that occur over both physical and social space, and capture the nonlinear, reinforcing nature of the emergence and dissolution of riots.

Keywords: agent-based modeling; geographic information systems; social network analysis; riots; social influence; rumor propagation.

Paper Highlights:

  • An agent-based model integrates geographic information systems and social network analysis to model the emergence of riots. 
  • The physical environment and agent attributes are developed using empirical data, including GIS and socioeconomic data. 
  • The agent’s cognitive framework allowed for modeling their activities in physical space and interactions in social space. 
  • Through the integration of the three techniques, we were able to capture the complex, nonlinear nature of riots. 
  • Results show that youth are most vulnerable, and, increasing education and employment has nonlinear affects on rioting.

The high-level UML diagram of the model
A high-level representation of the model’s agent behavior incorporated into the PECS framework

An example of the evolution of social networks of ten Residents across the first two days of a simulation run.

The movie below shows the agent-based model which explores ethnic clashes in the Kenyan slum. The environment is made up of households, businesses, and service facilities (such data comes from OpenStreetMap). Agents within the model use a transportation network to move across the environment. As agents go about their daily activities, they interact with other agents – building out an evolving social network. Agents seek to meet their identity standard. Failure to reach their identity standard increases the agents frustration which can lead to an aggressive response (i.e. moving from blue to red color) such as rioting.

As with many of our models, we provide the data, model code and detailed model description in the form of the ODD protocol for others to use, learn more or to extend. Click here for more information.

Full Reference:

Pires, B. and Crooks, A.T. (2017), Modeling the Emergence of Riots: A Geosimulation Approach, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 61: 66-80. (pdf)

As normal, any thoughts or comments are most appreciated.
 

Continue reading »
ABM, ABM Examples, GeoMason, GIS, MASON, Slums, SNA, Social Networks

Summer Projects

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Over the summer, Arie Croitoru and myself took part in the George Mason University Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program. We worked with three very talented high-school students who over the course of the seven and a half week program produced some excellent research around the areas of agent-based modeling and social media analysis. An overview of their work can be seen in the posters and abstracts that the students produced at the end of the internship.
Lawrence Wang explored how social media could be used with respect to predicting election results under a project entitled “And the Winner Is? Predicting Election Results using Social Media”. Below you can read Lawrence’s abstract and see his poster.

“The 2012 U.S. presidential election demonstrated how Twitter can serve as a widely accessible forum of political discourse. Recently, researchers have investigated whether social media, particularly Twitter, can function as a predictive tool. In the past decade, multiple studies have claimed to successfully predict the results of elections using Twitter data. However, many of these studies fail to account for the inherent population bias present in Twitter data, leading to ungeneralizable results. In this project, I investigate the prospects of using Twitter data as an alternative to poll data for predicting the 2012 presidential election. The tweet corpus consisted of tweets published one month before the November election day. Using VADER, a sentiment analysis tool, I analyzed over 140,000 tweets for political sentiment. I attempted to circumvent the Twitter population bias by comparing age, race, and gender metrics of the Twitter population with that of the U.S. population. Furthermore, I utilized Bayesian inference with prior distributions from the results of the 2008 presidential election in order to mitigate the effects of limited tweet data in certain states. The resulting model correctly predicted the likely outcomes of 46 of the 50 states and predicted that President Obama would be reelected with a probability of 0.945. Such a model could be used to explore the forthcoming elections. ” 

In a second project, Varun Talwar, explored how knowledge bases could be utilized to better contextualize social media discussions with a project entitled “Context Graphs: A Knowledge-Driven Model for Contextualizing Twitter Discourse.” Below you can read Varun’s project abstract and his end of project poster.

“Introduction: User posted content through online social media (SM) platforms in recent years has emerged as a rich field for narrative analysis of topics captured during the discussion discourse. In particular, collective discourse has been used to manually contextualize public perception of health related events.

Objective: As SM feeds tend to be noisy, automated detection of the context of a given SM discourse stream has proven to be a challenging task. The primary objective of this research is to explore how existing knowledge bases could be utilized to better contextualize SM discussions through topic modeling and mining. By utilizing such existing knowledge it would then be possible to explore to what extent a given discourse is related to a known or a new context, as well as compare and contrast SM discussions through their respective contexts.

Methods: In order to accomplish these goals this research proposes a novel approach for contextualizing SM discourse. In this approach, topic modeling is combined with a knowledgebase in a two-step process. First, key topics are extracted from a SM data corpus by applying a statistical topic-modeling algorithm, a process that also results in data dimensionality reduction. Once a set of salient topics are extracted, each topic is then used to mine the knowledge base for sub graphs that represent the contextual linkages between knowledge elements. Such sub-graphs can then further disambiguate the topic modeling results, and be utilized for qualifying context similarity across SM discussions.

Results: The time-series analysis of the Twitter discourse via graph-matching algorithms reveals the change in topics as evidenced by the emergence of the terms “pregnancy” and “abortion” as information about the virus propagated through the Twitter community. “

Elizabeth Hu explored the current migration crisis in Europe in a project entitled “Across the Sea: A Novel Agent-Based Model for the Migratory Patterns of the European Refugee Crisis”. Below is Elizabeth’s abstract, poster and an example model run.

“Since 2010, a growing number of refugees have sought asylum in European nations, fleeing violence and military conflict in their home countries. Most of the refugees originate from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and African nations. The vast majority of refugees risk their lives in the popular yet perilous Mediterranean Sea Route often prone to boat accidents and subsequent deaths of migrants.  The flow of millions of refugees has introduced a humanitarian crisis not seen since World War II. European nations are struggling to cope with the influx of refugees through various border policies.

In order to explore this crisis, a geographically explicit agent-based model has been developed to study the past and future patterns of refugee flows. Traditional migration models, which represent the population as an aggregate, fail to consider individual decision-making processes based on personal status and intervening opportunities. However, the novel agent-based model developed here of migration allows population behavior to emerge as the result of individual decisions. Initial population, city, and route attributes are based upon data from the UNHCR, EU agencies, crowd-sourced databases, and news articles. The agents, refugees, select goal destinations in accordance with the Law of Intervening Opportunities. Thus, goals are prone to change with fluctuating personal needs. Agents choose routes not only based on distance, but also other relevant route attributes. The resulting migration flows generated by the model under various circumstances could provide crucial guidance for policy and humanitarian aid decisions.”

The movie below gives a sense of the migration paths the refugees are taking.

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ABM, Big Data, GeoMason, GeoSocial, social media

Summer Projects

Posted on by
Over the summer, Arie Croitoru and myself took part in the George Mason University Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program. We worked with three very talented high-school students who over the course of the seven and a half week program produced some excellent research around the areas of agent-based modeling and social media analysis. An overview of their work can be seen in the posters and abstracts that the students produced at the end of the internship.
Lawrence Wang explored how social media could be used with respect to predicting election results under a project entitled “And the Winner Is? Predicting Election Results using Social Media”. Below you can read Lawrence’s abstract and see his poster.

“The 2012 U.S. presidential election demonstrated how Twitter can serve as a widely accessible forum of political discourse. Recently, researchers have investigated whether social media, particularly Twitter, can function as a predictive tool. In the past decade, multiple studies have claimed to successfully predict the results of elections using Twitter data. However, many of these studies fail to account for the inherent population bias present in Twitter data, leading to ungeneralizable results. In this project, I investigate the prospects of using Twitter data as an alternative to poll data for predicting the 2012 presidential election. The tweet corpus consisted of tweets published one month before the November election day. Using VADER, a sentiment analysis tool, I analyzed over 140,000 tweets for political sentiment. I attempted to circumvent the Twitter population bias by comparing age, race, and gender metrics of the Twitter population with that of the U.S. population. Furthermore, I utilized Bayesian inference with prior distributions from the results of the 2008 presidential election in order to mitigate the effects of limited tweet data in certain states. The resulting model correctly predicted the likely outcomes of 46 of the 50 states and predicted that President Obama would be reelected with a probability of 0.945. Such a model could be used to explore the forthcoming elections. ” 

In a second project, Varun Talwar, explored how knowledge bases could be utilized to better contextualize social media discussions with a project entitled “Context Graphs: A Knowledge-Driven Model for Contextualizing Twitter Discourse.” Below you can read Varun’s project abstract and his end of project poster.

“Introduction: User posted content through online social media (SM) platforms in recent years has emerged as a rich field for narrative analysis of topics captured during the discussion discourse. In particular, collective discourse has been used to manually contextualize public perception of health related events.

Objective: As SM feeds tend to be noisy, automated detection of the context of a given SM discourse stream has proven to be a challenging task. The primary objective of this research is to explore how existing knowledge bases could be utilized to better contextualize SM discussions through topic modeling and mining. By utilizing such existing knowledge it would then be possible to explore to what extent a given discourse is related to a known or a new context, as well as compare and contrast SM discussions through their respective contexts.

Methods: In order to accomplish these goals this research proposes a novel approach for contextualizing SM discourse. In this approach, topic modeling is combined with a knowledgebase in a two-step process. First, key topics are extracted from a SM data corpus by applying a statistical topic-modeling algorithm, a process that also results in data dimensionality reduction. Once a set of salient topics are extracted, each topic is then used to mine the knowledge base for sub graphs that represent the contextual linkages between knowledge elements. Such sub-graphs can then further disambiguate the topic modeling results, and be utilized for qualifying context similarity across SM discussions.

Results: The time-series analysis of the Twitter discourse via graph-matching algorithms reveals the change in topics as evidenced by the emergence of the terms “pregnancy” and “abortion” as information about the virus propagated through the Twitter community. “

Elizabeth Hu explored the current migration crisis in Europe in a project entitled “Across the Sea: A Novel Agent-Based Model for the Migratory Patterns of the European Refugee Crisis”. Below is Elizabeth’s abstract, poster and an example model run.

“Since 2010, a growing number of refugees have sought asylum in European nations, fleeing violence and military conflict in their home countries. Most of the refugees originate from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and African nations. The vast majority of refugees risk their lives in the popular yet perilous Mediterranean Sea Route often prone to boat accidents and subsequent deaths of migrants.  The flow of millions of refugees has introduced a humanitarian crisis not seen since World War II. European nations are struggling to cope with the influx of refugees through various border policies.

In order to explore this crisis, a geographically explicit agent-based model has been developed to study the past and future patterns of refugee flows. Traditional migration models, which represent the population as an aggregate, fail to consider individual decision-making processes based on personal status and intervening opportunities. However, the novel agent-based model developed here of migration allows population behavior to emerge as the result of individual decisions. Initial population, city, and route attributes are based upon data from the UNHCR, EU agencies, crowd-sourced databases, and news articles. The agents, refugees, select goal destinations in accordance with the Law of Intervening Opportunities. Thus, goals are prone to change with fluctuating personal needs. Agents choose routes not only based on distance, but also other relevant route attributes. The resulting migration flows generated by the model under various circumstances could provide crucial guidance for policy and humanitarian aid decisions.”

The movie below gives a sense of the migration paths the refugees are taking.

Continue reading »
ABM, Big Data, GeoMason, GeoSocial, social media

New Paper: ABM Applied to the Spread of Cholera

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Cholera transmission through the interaction
of host and the environment
We are pleased to announce we have just had a paper published in Environmental Modelling and Software entitled “An Agent-based Modeling Approach Applied to the Spread of Cholera“
Research highlights include:
  • An agent-based model was developed to explore the spread of cholera.
  • The progress of cholera transmission is represented through a Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) model. 
  • The model integrates geographical data with agents’ daily activities within a refugee camp.
  • Results show cholera infections are impacted by agents’ movement and source of contamination. 
  • The model has the potential for aiding humanitarian response with respect to disease outbreaks.
Cholera dynamics when rainfall is introduced.

Spatial spread of cholera over the course of a year.
Study area
If the research highlights have not turned you off, the abstract to the paper is below:
“Cholera is an intestinal disease and is characterized by diarrhea and severe dehydration. While cholera has mainly been eliminated in regions that can provide clean water, adequate hygiene and proper sanitation; it remains a constant threat in many parts of Africa and Asia. Within this paper, we develop an agent-based model that explores the spread of cholera in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. Poor sanitation and housing conditions contribute to frequent incidents of cholera outbreaks within this camp. We model the spread of cholera by explicitly representing the interaction between humans and their environment, and the spread of the epidemic using a Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered model. Results from the model show that the spread of cholera grows radially from contaminated water sources and seasonal rains can cause the emergence of cholera outbreaks. This modeling effort highlights the potential of agent-based modeling to explore the spread of cholera in a humanitarian context.”
Finally to aide replication, experimentation or just explore how you can link raster and vector data in GeoMason, we have a dedicated website where you can download executables of the model along with the source code and associated data. Moreover we have provide a really detailed Overview, Design concepts, and Details (ODD) Protocol document of the model.

Full Reference:

Crooks, A.T. and Hailegiorgis, A.B. (2014), An Agent-based Modeling Approach Applied to the Spread of Cholera, Environmental Modelling and Software, 62: 164-177
DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2014.08.027 (pdf)

Continue reading »
ABM, Disease, GeoMason, GIS, MASON

New Paper: ABM Applied to the Spread of Cholera

Posted on by
Cholera transmission through the interaction
of host and the environment
We are pleased to announce we have just had a paper published in Environmental Modelling and Software entitled “An Agent-based Modeling Approach Applied to the Spread of Cholera“
Research highlights include:
  • An agent-based model was developed to explore the spread of cholera.
  • The progress of cholera transmission is represented through a Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) model. 
  • The model integrates geographical data with agents’ daily activities within a refugee camp.
  • Results show cholera infections are impacted by agents’ movement and source of contamination. 
  • The model has the potential for aiding humanitarian response with respect to disease outbreaks.
Cholera dynamics when rainfall is introduced.

Spatial spread of cholera over the course of a year.
Study area
If the research highlights have not turned you off, the abstract to the paper is below:
“Cholera is an intestinal disease and is characterized by diarrhea and severe dehydration. While cholera has mainly been eliminated in regions that can provide clean water, adequate hygiene and proper sanitation; it remains a constant threat in many parts of Africa and Asia. Within this paper, we develop an agent-based model that explores the spread of cholera in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. Poor sanitation and housing conditions contribute to frequent incidents of cholera outbreaks within this camp. We model the spread of cholera by explicitly representing the interaction between humans and their environment, and the spread of the epidemic using a Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered model. Results from the model show that the spread of cholera grows radially from contaminated water sources and seasonal rains can cause the emergence of cholera outbreaks. This modeling effort highlights the potential of agent-based modeling to explore the spread of cholera in a humanitarian context.”
Finally to aide replication, experimentation or just explore how you can link raster and vector data in GeoMason, we have a dedicated website where you can download executables of the model along with the source code and associated data. Moreover we have provide a really detailed Overview, Design concepts, and Details (ODD) Protocol document of the model.

Full Reference:

Crooks, A.T. and Hailegiorgis, A.B. (2014), An Agent-based Modeling Approach Applied to the Spread of Cholera, Environmental Modelling and Software, 62: 164-177
DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2014.08.027 (pdf)

Continue reading »
ABM, Disease, GeoMason, GIS, MASON

Modeling the outbreak, spread, and containment of tuberculosis

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It seems my interest into disease models is growing. While the development of the cholera model is still underway, over the summer I have had been working with a very talented high school student looking at the outbreak, spread and containment of tuberculosis (TB). Why might you ask? TB is a global problem with 1.8 billion people having a TB Infection, 8.8 million people infected with the TB disease, and around 1.5 million annual deaths. It is the second most common form of death from an infectious disease with the majority of cases in developing countries.

So we have been developing a model that explores how TB might manifest itself, spread within an urban setting and the potential to contain the disease. We have chosen as our test case the Kibera slum within Nairobi, Kenya. Agents in this model represent the residents of the Kibera slum. They are mobile and goal-orientated, seeking to fulfill one goal before moving on to the next. Goals are determined based on the agent’s characteristics (age, sex, etc.) as well as their needs (water, food, health etc.). The exact location they choose to go to is also affected by the distance. When agents interact with one another, they can be infected with TB. Infection is determined upon the amount of bacilli absorbed by agents and their immune response. The transition from infection to disease for HIV positive patients is also dependent on the patient’s CD4 cell count.  What you see below is a poster we presented at Krasnow Institute Retreat.

To give a sense of the dynamics of the model, the movie below shows agents moving around the slum and how their health status changes as time progresses.

Continue reading »
Agent Based Models, Disease, GeoMason, GIS, MASON, Slums

Modeling the outbreak, spread, and containment of tuberculosis

Posted on by
It seems my interest into disease models is growing. While the development of the cholera model is still underway, over the summer I have had been working with a very talented high school student looking at the outbreak, spread and containment of tuberculosis (TB). Why might you ask? TB is a global problem with 1.8 billion people having a TB Infection, 8.8 million people infected with the TB disease, and around 1.5 million annual deaths. It is the second most common form of death from an infectious disease with the majority of cases in developing countries.

So we have been developing a model that explores how TB might manifest itself, spread within an urban setting and the potential to contain the disease. We have chosen as our test case the Kibera slum within Nairobi, Kenya. Agents in this model represent the residents of the Kibera slum. They are mobile and goal-orientated, seeking to fulfill one goal before moving on to the next. Goals are determined based on the agent’s characteristics (age, sex, etc.) as well as their needs (water, food, health etc.). The exact location they choose to go to is also affected by the distance. When agents interact with one another, they can be infected with TB. Infection is determined upon the amount of bacilli absorbed by agents and their immune response. The transition from infection to disease for HIV positive patients is also dependent on the patient’s CD4 cell count.  What you see below is a poster we presented at Krasnow Institute Retreat.

To give a sense of the dynamics of the model, the movie below shows agents moving around the slum and how their health status changes as time progresses.

Continue reading »
Agent Based Models, Disease, GeoMason, GIS, MASON, Slums

New Publication: GIS and Agent-Based models for Humanitarian Assistance

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Inputs to the model
 
As the readers of the blog know, we have an interest in GIS, agent-based modeling and crowdsourcing. Now we have a paper that combines all these three elements. Its entitled “GIS and Agent-Based models for Humanitarian Assistance” and is published in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. 
 
The model itself was written in MASON and uses extensively GeoMASON. Data comes from several different sources (both raster and vector) including OpenStreetMap and LandScan. Below you can read an abstract of the paper and see a movie of one of the scenarios.

“Natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis occur all over the world, altering the physical landscape and often severely disrupting people’s daily lives. Recently researchers’ attention has focused on using crowds of volunteers to help map the damaged infrastructure and devastation caused by natural disasters, such as those in Haiti and Pakistan. This data is extremely useful, as it is allows us to assess damage and thus aid the distribution of relief, but it tells us little about how the people in such areas will react to the devastation. This paper demonstrates a prototype spatially explicit agent-based model, created using crowdsourced geographic information and other sources of publicly available data, which can be used to study the aftermath of a catastrophic event. The specific case modelled here is the Haiti earthquake of January 2010. Crowdsourced data is used to build the initial populations of people affected by the event, to construct their environment, and to set their needs based on the damage to buildings. We explore how people react to the distribution of aid, as well as how rumours relating to aid availability propagate through the population. Such a model could potentially provide a link between socio-cultural information about the people affected and the relevant humanitarian relief organizations.”

Full Reference: 

Crooks, A.T. and Wise, S. (2013), GIS and Agent-Based models for Humanitarian Assistance, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 41: 100-111.

Continue reading »
ABM, ABM Examples, Crowdsourcing, GeoMason, GIS, MASON, social media, VGI

New Publication: GIS and Agent-Based models for Humanitarian Assistance

Posted on by
Inputs to the model
 
As the readers of the blog know, we have an interest in GIS, agent-based modeling and crowdsourcing. Now we have a paper that combines all these three elements. Its entitled “GIS and Agent-Based models for Humanitarian Assistance” and is published in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. 
 
The model itself was written in MASON and uses extensively GeoMASON. Data comes from several different sources (both raster and vector) including OpenStreetMap and LandScan. Below you can read an abstract of the paper and see a movie of one of the scenarios.

“Natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis occur all over the world, altering the physical landscape and often severely disrupting people’s daily lives. Recently researchers’ attention has focused on using crowds of volunteers to help map the damaged infrastructure and devastation caused by natural disasters, such as those in Haiti and Pakistan. This data is extremely useful, as it is allows us to assess damage and thus aid the distribution of relief, but it tells us little about how the people in such areas will react to the devastation. This paper demonstrates a prototype spatially explicit agent-based model, created using crowdsourced geographic information and other sources of publicly available data, which can be used to study the aftermath of a catastrophic event. The specific case modelled here is the Haiti earthquake of January 2010. Crowdsourced data is used to build the initial populations of people affected by the event, to construct their environment, and to set their needs based on the damage to buildings. We explore how people react to the distribution of aid, as well as how rumours relating to aid availability propagate through the population. Such a model could potentially provide a link between socio-cultural information about the people affected and the relevant humanitarian relief organizations.”

Full Reference: 

Crooks, A.T. and Wise, S. (2013), GIS and Agent-Based models for Humanitarian Assistance, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 41: 100-111.

Continue reading »
ABM, ABM Examples, Crowdsourcing, GeoMason, GIS, MASON, social media, VGI
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