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AN AGENT-BASED MODEL OF HUMAN DISPERSALS AT A GLOBAL SCALE
- Source :
- Advances in Complex Systems. 16(04):1350023-1
- Publication Year :
- 2013
-
Abstract
- In this paper, we report on the theoretical foundations, empirical context and technical implementation of an agent-based modeling (ABM) framework, that uses a high-performance computing (HPC) approach to investigate human population dynamics on a global scale, and on evolutionary time scales. The ABM-HPC framework provides an in silico testbed to explore how short-term/small-scale patterns of individual human behavior and long-term/large-scale patterns of environmental change act together to influence human dispersal, survival and extinction scenarios. These topics are currently at the center of the Neanderthal debate, i.e., the question why Neanderthals died out during the Late Pleistocene, while modern humans dispersed over the entire globe. To tackle this and similar questions, simulations typically adopt one of two opposing approaches, top-down (equation-based) and bottom-up (agent-based) models of population dynamics. We propose HPC technology as an essential computational tool to bridge the gap between these approaches. Using the numerical simulation of worldwide human dispersals as an example, we show that integrating different levels of model hierarchy into an ABM-HPC simulation framework provides new insights into emergent properties of the model, and into the potential and limitations of agent-based versus continuum models.
- Subjects :
- Agent-based model
10207 Department of Anthropology
education.field_of_study
Computer simulation
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology
Ecology (disciplines)
Scale (chemistry)
Testbed
Population
2207 Control and Systems Engineering
Context (language use)
Biology
Data science
Agent-based models, dispersals, ecology, high-performance computing, palaeoanthropology, spatiotemporal population dynamics
Human population dynamics
Control and Systems Engineering
education
Simulation
Subjects
Details
- Volume :
- 16
- Issue :
- 04
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Advances in Complex Systems
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....8ea7b1a3fe5e7ff39fae0ef5a1a34675