Considering the Needs and Culture of the Local Population in Contemporary Military Intervention Simulations: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach

Simulating patterns of life: More representative time-activity patterns that account for context

“…The intent is to identify emergent patterns from numerous runs of agents’ activities over some time period (e. g., a day or week), including their interactions with each other ( Jiang et al, 2020 ; Züfle et al, 2021 ) and their environment ( Abraham et al, 2017 ; Rand and Stummer, 2021 ; Zhu et al, 2013 ), based on imposed rules. For instance, many iterations of community-level agent-based models, covering diverse activities among individuals, yield usable patterns of culturally-aware agents that exhibit behaviors that reflect locally meaningful customs or that change based on local preferences or demands ( Bergier and Faucher, 2018 ; Tracy et al, 2018 ; Xu, 2012 ). The sum of runs of these models, that is, combined patterns of life, is used to answer questions, depending on the modeler’s intention, such as how individuals move in aggregate, who and where individuals meet, what they breathe or touch, what activities they undertake, how their health improves or deteriorates, or how the situation escalates or resolves.…”