The behavior of passengers in urban railway stations (i.e., metro stations) is dependent on environmental, cultural, and temporal factors. In this research, escalator infrastructures were studied to better understand the relationship between different conditions and passenger behaviors through a method based on video cameras, passenger detection techniques, and a simulation framework.
Active shooting events are, unfortunately, a common situation. To help civilians, first responders, and governments better understand how to deal with these, a model was developed to simulate such incidents. In addition, the Purdue Institute of Homeland Security built a library to make future models simpler to develop.
In the last few years, there has been an increase in accidents involving pedestrians in the Mexico City subway. A proposed solution is to install physical barriers between platforms and tracks. The research team built an agent-based pedestrian flow simulation model to prove the effectiveness of such barriers.
A proof-of-concept model demonstrates how the development of a circular economy can impact energy use and the environment. The aim is to consider several aspects that contribute to a thriving community: energy requirements, jobs, tourism, supply lines, and the impact of waste on water resources and the land (landfill).
The study of friendship formation is fundamental to the study of human beings. In this paper, the research team presents an agent-based model of friendship networks grounded in the existing empirical research literature on friendship formation. The goal is to better understand what mechanisms might be influential in the formation of friendships as well as how such modeling might inform (and potentially advance) our understanding of existing empirical work.
The researchers developed an agent-based simulation model of a social process, the Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES), that replicates every step of the system and simulates the associated human actions. Analysis of the model outputs shows that the performance metrics of individual agents in the social process simulation are similar to their real-world counterparts. The success of this agent-based social process simulation model allows for increased confidence in the predictive accuracy of what-if analysis conducted on human processes. In addition, process changes may be modeled to inform policy recommendations.
Schelling’s social segregation model has been extensively used for human behavior analysis and studied over the years. A major implication of the model is that individual preferences of similarity lead to a collective segregation behavior. Schelling used Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) with uni-dimensional agents. In reality, people are multidimensional. This raises the question of whether multi-dimensionality can boost stability or reduce segregation in society.
In today’s rapidly changing technological scenario, tech giants revise their strategic alignment every couple of years. As a result, their workforce has to be adapted to the organization’s strategy. Members of the workforce who are neither relevant to the strategic alignment, nor can be made relevant by reskilling, have to be either outplaced (i.e. placed in an another job within organization) or separated from the organization. In geographies like Europe, where the cost of separation is very high, it becomes very important to make the right decision for each employee. In this paper, we describe a simulation based methodology to find the probability and time of outplacement of an employee. These numbers are inputs to a global problem of making the optimal decision for the entire workforce.
The recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals call for the end of poverty and the equitable provision of healthcare. These goals are often at odds, however: health seeking can lead to catastrophic spending, an outcome for which cancer patients and the poor in resource-limited settings are at particularly high risk. How various health policies affect the additional aims of financial wellbeing and equity is poorly understood. This paper evaluates the health, financial, and equity impacts of governmental and charitable policies for surgical oncology in a resource-limited setting. Three charitable platforms for surgical oncology delivery in Uganda were compared to six governmental policies aimed at improving healthcare access. An extended cost-effectiveness analysis using an agent-based simulation model examined the numbers of lives saved, catastrophic expenditure averted, impoverishment averted, costs, and the distribution of benefits across the wealth spectrum.
The public assistance system is supposed to offer a bridge between poverty and self-sufficiency. Families receive benefits such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to soften the impact of loss of income. The programs are intended to be limited in duration and provide a very modest amount of financial support. Some families are fortunate to also receive a housing voucher or a child care subsidy to help offset basic expenses. Eligibility for benefits varies by program and is based on different criteria, most of which are linked to personal income. This study asks: what happens when benefits are cut before individuals reach economic stability? This is frequently called the “benefits cliff.”