Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation of the Emotional and Behavioral Dynamics of Human Civilians during Emergency Situations

Abstract

Abstract. Agent based social simulations are becoming prevailing tools in the context of human behavior studies. Researchers in psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience have proved the prominent role of emotion on cognition and behavior. Particularly, during emergency situations, human emotional dynamics have a major effect on behavior. In this context, we aim to study the role of emotions in reproducing human-like emotional civilian agents. The objective of the current research work is to model and to simulate human emotional dynamics and their effect on the behaviors of civilians in emergencies. In this article, we describe an emotional agent model that integrates a computational model of emotions. Agent perceptions are subject to a cognitive appraisal process to generate agent emotions. These have an effect on the generation of agent behavior.Keywords: Emotional dynamics, Appraisal, Emergencies, Human behavior. IntroductionImplementing human characteristics into artificial systems is a key and a multidisciplinary challenge. This implementation aims at building agents with believable and realistic behaviors. Different factors are modeled in human behaviors simulations. These include physical and physiological factors, cognition, emotions, personality traits, social relations among others. The interplay of emotion and cognition is particularly important in the study of human behaviors, particularly during emergency situations. In fact, emotions are important regulator factors of human behaviors, mainly to respond to highly emotive events such as those happening in emergency situations. Thus, humans that experience heightened emotional states can have unexpected behaviors [1]. Therefore, emotions are necessary to produce realistic social simulations in emergencies. These situations are characterized by their dynamicity and complexity. Hence, modeling human-like agents in such situations requires the integration of emotion modeling. In fact, emotions represent important adaptation mechanisms to changes that may occur in the agent environment.

Modeling and Simulation of Coping Mechanisms and Emotional Behavior During Emergency Situations

“…In previous works, we have proposed an emotional BDI agent model [7,8]. The latter makes use of our computational model of emotions outlined in [9] that is based on the OCC model of emotions [10].…”

“…In the following, we show how coping mechanisms with emotions alter agent goals and their behaviors during emergencies. Table 2 summarizes the SRE, PE and ORE an agent may perceive in an emergency situation and the emotions of the OCC model that may result from their appraisal as defined in [7].…”

“…Finally, the appraisal of objects triggers Attitude-based emotions. The appraisers compute emotion intensities according to our computational model of emotions (Details about the different formula we use to compute emotion intensities along with the implementation results of the emotion generation process within the agent are provided in [7][8][9]). The output of the appraisal process is an emotional state that affects the agent goals and orients its BDI-based action selection process.…”

“…In this paper, we adopt the psychological theory of coping proposed by Roseman [3] to model and simulate coping mechanisms in stressful situations. Particularly, we integrate a coping mechanism into our emotional agent model [7,8]. The agent model makes use of a computational model of emotions we proposed in [9] that is based-on the OCC model [10].…”

“…We aim to study the impact of the generated emotions on the agent action selection process. The coping model is implemented within the emotional agent based social simulation of civilians in an emergency situation [7,8]. The civilian simulator is integrated into the RoboCupRescue (RCR) simulation system [11], which is an agent-based simulator of an emergency situation after an earthquake.…”