BorealFireSIM is a cellular automaton based model that serves to identify future fire patterns in the boreal forest of Quebec, Canada. The model simulates yearly fire seasons and adjusts decadal climate variables based on two future carbon pathways (RCP45 (low emissions) and RCP85 (business as usual)). The BorealFireSIM model simulates future fire patterns up to the year 2100.

MELBIS-V1 is a spatially explicit agent-based model that allows the geospatial simulation of the decision-making process of newcomers arriving in the bilingual cities and boroughs of the island of Montreal, Quebec in CANADA, and the resulting urban segregation spatial patterns. The model was implemented in NetLogo, using geospatial raster datasets of 120m spatial resolution.

MELBIS-V2 enhances MELBIS-V1 to implement and simulate the decision-making processes of incoming immigrants, and to analyze the resulting spatial patterns of segregation as immigrants arrive and settle in various cities in Canada. The arrival and segregation of immigrants is modeled with MELBIS-V2 and compared for three major Canadian immigration gateways, including the City of Toronto, Metro Vancouver, and the City of Calgary.

SWIM is a simulation of water management, designed to study interactions among water managers and customers in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. The simulation can be used to study manager interaction in Phoenix, manager and customer messaging and water conservation in Tucson, and when coupled to the Water Balance Model (U New Hampshire), impacts of management and consumer choices on regional hydrology.

Publications:

Murphy, John T., Jonathan Ozik, Nicholson T. Collier, Mark Altaweel, Richard B. Lammers, Alexander A. Prusevich, Andrew Kliskey, and Lilian Alessa. “Simulating Regional Hydrology and Water Management: An Integrated Agent-Based Approach.” Winter Simulation Conference, Huntington Beach, CA, 2015.

This model simulates economic and epidemiological interaction between citrus production and the disease Huanglongbing (HLB), which is vectored by the Asian citrus psyllid. The model is used to evaluate area-wide coordinated spraying when free-riding is possible given individuals’ beliefs in other grower participation in area-wide spraying and in the information provided by extension on the threat as HLB spread.

This model simulates the lithic raw material use and provisioning behavior of a group that inhabits a permanent base camp, and uses stone tools.

HeatSupply models the development of district heat networks in cities by three types of instigators: Local Authorities, Commercial developers and Community organisations.

Municipal waste management (MWM) is essential for urban development. Efficient waste management is essential for providing a healthy and clean environment, for reducing GHGs and for increasing the amount of material recycled. Waste separation at source is perceived as an effective MWM strategy that relays on the behaviour of citizens to separate their waste in different fractions. The strategy is straightforward, and many cities have adopted the strategy or are working to implement it. However, the success of such strategy depends on adequate understanding of the drivers of the behaviour of proper waste sorting. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) has been extensively applied to explain the behaviour of waste sorting and contributes to determining the importance of different psychological constructs. Although, evidence shows its validity in different contexts, without exploring how urban policies and the built environment affect the TPB, its application to urban challenges remains unlocked. To date, limited research has focused in exposing how different urban situations such as: distance to waste bins, conditions of recycling facilities or information campaigns affect the planned behaviour of waste separation. To fill this gap, an agent-based model (ABM) of residents capable of planning the behaviour of waste separation is developed. The study is a proof of concept that shows how the TPB can be combined with simulations to provide useful insights to evaluate different urban planning situations. In this paper we depart from a survey to capture TPB constructs, then Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is used to validate the TPB hypothesis and extract the drivers of the behaviour of waste sorting. Finally, the development of the ABM is detailed and the drivers of the TPB are used to determine how the residents behave. A low-density and a high-density urban scenario are used to extract policy insights. In conclusion, the integration between the TPB into ABMs can help to bridge the knowledge gap between can provide a useful insight to analysing and evaluating waste management scenarios in urban areas. By better understanding individual waste sorting behaviour, we can develop more effective policies and interventions to promote sustainable waste management practices.

Reusing existing material stocks in developed built environments can significantly reduce the environmental footprint of the construction and demolition sector. However, material reuse in urban areas presents technical, temporal, and geographical challenges. Although a better understanding of spatial and temporal changes in material stocks could improve city resource management, limited scientific contributions have addressed this challenge.
This study details the steps followed in developing a spatially explicit rule-based simulation of materials stock. The simulation provides a proof of concept by incorporating the spatial and temporal dimensions of construction and demolition activities to analyse how various urban parameters determine material flows and embodied carbon in urban areas. The model explores the effects of 1) re-using recycled materials, 2) demolitions, 3) renovations and 4) various building typologies.
To showcase the model’s capabilities, the residential building stock of Gothenburg City is used as a case study, and eight building materials are tracked. Environmental impacts (A1-A3) are calculated with embodied carbon factors. The main parameters are explored in a baseline scenario. Then, a second scenario focuses on a hypothetical policy that promotes improvements in building energy performance.
The simulation can be expanded to include more materials and built environment assets and allows for future explorations on, for example, the role of logistics, the implementation of recycling or reuse stations, and, in general, supporting sustainable and circular strategies from the construction sector.

We demonstrate how Repast Simphony statecharts can efficiently encapsulate the deep classification hierarchy of the U.S. Air Force for manpower life cycle costing.

This is an opinion dynamics model which extends the model found in (Martins 2009). The previous model had an unshared uncertainty assumption in agent-to-agent interaction this model relaxes that assumption. The model only supports a fully connect network where every agent has an equal likelihood of interacting with every other agent at any given time step. The model is highly modular so different social network paradigm can easier be implemented.