An empirical workflow to integrate uncertainty and sensitivity analysis to evaluate agent-based simulation outputs

Abreu, Carolina G.; Ralha, Célia Ghedini

doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2018.06.013

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…As we are dealing primarily with biophysical and bio-economic inputs, the resulting simulations cannot be contrasted in a statistical sense, because the simulations reflect the inputs and equations used in the model (rather than real differences between measured parameters). Sensitivity analyses [42] was conducted using a 'one-at-a-time' approach was to examine the sensitivity of a range of model input parameters. Boolean parameters (Irrigation presence and Quantity parameters) were tested as on/off.…”

Section: Sensitivity Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Integrated Economic, Environmental and Social Approach to Agricultural Land-Use Planning

Shahpari

Allison

Harrison

et al. 2021

Land

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Agricultural land-use change is a dynamic process that varies as a function of social, economic and environmental factors spanning from the local to the global scale. The cumulative regional impacts of these factors on land use adoption decisions by farmers are neither well accounted for nor reflected in agricultural land use planning. We present an innovative spatially explicit agent-based modelling approach (Crop GIS-ABM) that accounts for factors involved in farmer decision making on new irrigation adoption to enable land-use predictions and exploration. The model was designed using a participatory approach, capturing stakeholder insights in a conceptual model of farmer decisions. We demonstrate a case study of the factors influencing the uptake of new irrigation infrastructure and land use in Tasmania, Australia. The model demonstrates how irrigated land-use expansion promotes the diffusion of alternative crops in the region, as well as how coupled social, biophysical and environmental conditions play an important role in crop selection. Our study shows that agricultural land use reflected the evolution of multiple simultaneous interacting biophysical and socio-economic drivers, including soil and climate type, crop and commodity prices, and the accumulated effects of interactive decisions of farmers.

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Section: Sensitivity Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Integrated Economic, Environmental and Social Approach to Agricultural Land-Use Planning

Shahpari

Allison

Harrison

et al. 2021

Land

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“…However, it captures the essence of what we desire: estimates of ( ≻ ) that are robust to within-model stochasticity. We considered using the approach presented in Abreu and Ralha (2018), but the coefficient of variation (i.e., the standard deviation of ( ≻ ) divided by the mean) is unstable with estimates near zero. Additionally, we considered the approach presented in Law (2008) (pg.…”

Section: Appendix 2 Convergence Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological and financial strategies provide complementary benefits for smallholder climate resilience: insights from a simulation model

Williams¹,

Dreßler²,

Stratton³

et al. 2021

E&S

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Researchers and development organizations regularly grapple with competing ecological and financial strategies for building climate resilience in smallholder agricultural systems, but rarely are such approaches considered in tandem. Using a socialecological simulation model, we explored how different combinations of legume cover cropping, an ecological insurance, and indexbased crop insurance, a financial insurance, affect the climate resilience of mixed crop-livestock smallholder farmers over time. The model simulates interactions between soil nutrient dynamics, crop yields, and household wealth, which is carried solely in the form of livestock. We assume legume cover cropping provides biological nitrogen fixation, thereby increasing soil fertility and productivity over time, whereas microinsurance gives payouts in drought years that provide ex-post coping benefits. Our model results indicate that the benefits of cover cropping to mean household income strongly complement the shock-absorbing benefits of microinsurance. Specifically, we found: (1) insurance always provides larger benefits during and in the wake of a drought, while cover cropping progressively reduces poverty in the medium-to long-term; (2) the use of crop insurance solely as an ex-post coping strategy may not reduce the incidence of poverty; and (3) legume cover cropping offers larger relative benefits in more degraded environments and for poor farmers. These results underscore the complementary roles that ecological and financial strategies could play in building resilience in smallholder agricultural systems. The stylized model constitutes an important social-ecological foundation for future empirical research to inform agricultural innovation and sustainable development priorities.

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“…It is notable that the uncertainty in ABM arises from the nature of complex systems they try to represent and is an important issue for the validation of these models. Recent studies have focused on uncertainty analysis in ABM (Abreu & Ralha, 2018;Baustert & Benetto, 2017;Lee et al, 2015;Ligmann-Zielinska & Sun, 2010). However, in the present research the ABM is intended to educate and to motivate for cooperation in small communities, more than to predict system-social behaviour itself.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The application of role-playing games and agent-based modelling to the collaborative water management in peri-urban communities

Mariano

Alves

2020

RBRH

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ABSTRACT The environmental systems associated with water resources management have always been represented through physical factors and processes. In order to consider the social system coupled with the environmental system, a new modeling approach emerges, the agent-based modeling. Two steps are essential to build agent-based models-ABMs. The first step requires the agent behavior understanding and considers the influence of external factors in the agent decision-making. The second one is the system representation through an ABM. In this perspective, the WaDiGa water management role-playing game-RPG was applied to map the rural producers' behavior of a peri-urban region. In addition, an ABM was developed in the GAMA platform intended to represent the agents’ behavior and its consequences in the environment configuration. After applying the proposed methodology, it was concluded that the WaDiGa was able to identify factors that influence the local agents' decision-making, and that the game fulfills the function of a dialogue platform on the water resource theme, and could be used as a tool for environmental education and socio-hydrological modeling. The ABM developed was able to represent the relationship between the agricultural production of the community and the water use, presenting results similar to the results obtained in the WaDiGa.

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An empirical workflow to integrate uncertainty and sensitivity analysis to evaluate agent-based simulation outputs

Cited by 6 publications

References 44 publications

An Integrated Economic, Environmental and Social Approach to Agricultural Land-Use Planning

An Integrated Economic, Environmental and Social Approach to Agricultural Land-Use Planning

Ecological and financial strategies provide complementary benefits for smallholder climate resilience: insights from a simulation model

The application of role-playing games and agent-based modelling to the collaborative water management in peri-urban communities

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