GIS, Agent-based modeling, social network analysis

My research interests stand between natural resource management and ecological economics. The aim of my PhD project responds to the increasing demand for cross-disciplinary agent-based models that examine the disjunction between economic growth and more sustainable use of natural resources.

My research attempts to test the effectiveness of different governance and economic frameworks on managing natural resources sustainably at both regional and national levels. The goal is to simulate how communities and institutions manage the commons in complex socio-ecological systems through several case-studies, e.g. rainforest management in Australia. It is hoped that the models will highlight which combination of variables lead to positive trends in both economic and environmental indicators, which could stimulate more sustainable practices by governments, private sectors and civil society.

My research interests include policy informatics and decision making, modeling in policy analysis and management decisions, public health management and policy, and the role of public value in policy development. I am particularly interested in less mainstream approaches to modeling that account for learning, feedback, and other systems dynamics. I include Bayesian inference, agent-based models, and behavioral assumptions in both my research and teaching.
In my dissertation research, I conceptualize state Medicaid programs as complex adaptive systems characterized by diverse actors, behaviors, relationships, and objectives. These systems reproduce themselves through both strategic and emergent mechanisms of program management. I focus on the mechanism by which citizens are sorted into or out of the system: program enrollment. Using Bayesian regression and agent-based models, I explore the role of administrative practices (such as presumptive eligibility and longer continuous eligibility periods) in increasing enrollment of eligible citizens into Medicaid programs.

The particular focus of the research is the development of a spatial and Agent-Based Model to capture the motivations underlying the decision making of the various actors towards the investments in the quality of land and institutions, or other aspects of land use change. Inductive models (GIS and statistical based) can extrapolate existing land use patterns in time but cannot include actors decisions, learning and responses to new phenomena, e.g. new crops or soil conservation techniques. Therefore, more deductive (‘theory-driven’) approaches need to be used to complement the inductive (‘data-driven’) methods for a full grip on transition processes. Agent-Based Modeling is suitable for this work, in view of the number and types of actors (farmer, sedentary and transhumant herders, gender, ethnicity, wealth, local and supra-local) involved in land use and management. NetLogo framework could be use to facilitate modeling because it portray some desirable characteristics (agent based and spatially explicit). The model develop should provide social and anthropological insights in how farmers work and learn.

Down Networks is a real time, progressively agile non profit startup whose goals are to fund its research via pragmatically aggressive altruistic entrepreneurial pursuits informed by proprietary in-house techniques, open source technology and refined scientific methodology.

Modeling, companion modeling, role playing games, serious games, multi-agent systems, agent-oriented simulation, complex systems, water management, artificial intelligence

Exhaustible natural resources
Fishery resources
Network game theory models
Agent-based models

MY research aims to give artists better 3D references and scene reconstructions which can be directly fed into the creative pipeline. This is motivated by increasing public demand for detailed, complex 3D worlds and the resulting demand this places on world design artists.

This project lookings at developing acquisition and modelling technologies that provide more than just a visual reference: in the context of this project, visual acquisition and reconstruction methods shall be developed that provide richer, three-dimensional references, and that ultimately yield scene reconstructions that can directly be fed into the content creation pipeline. The project will focus on natural environments (as opposed to urban scenes) and may combine multi-spectral imaging, wide-baseline stereo reconstruction and semantic scene analysis to obtain approximate procedural representations of natural scenes.

1. Dynamics of socio-ecological resource use systems
   • Pasture use in dryland grazing systems under change, effects of new technologies and policy instruments, emergence of polarization between pastoralists (e.g. in terms of livestock numbers).
   • Thresholds of disaster management performance under change, loss of manpower, the role of information as critical resource.
2. Human decision making in agent-based models.
3. Remote sensing and GIS.