SimNCD: An agent-based formalism for the study of noncommunicable diseases

Abstract

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are multifactorial chronic illnesses that cause longterm morbidities in a person's life. Their nonlinear and complex dynamics make them difficult to control and predict. Hence, it is crucial for public health researchers and practitioners to understand and model them. This paper proposes a generic interaction-oriented agent-based modeling for NCDs, called SimNCD. It models individuals living within a social network and daily engaging in activities from the physical environment. The practice of these activities stirs the individual's health vulnerability to cure, acquire or maintain NCDs. This modeling can serve as a tool in public health policies for the study of NCDs where the individual's behavior greatly influences the factors predisposing to that disease. We also propose a specified version of SimNCD for modeling childhood obesity, called SimNCD ChO. More precisely, the latter models the complex relationships between children's physical activity and the development of their corpulence during their growth.

A systematic review of system dynamics and agent‐based obesity models: Evaluating obesity as part of the global syndemic

“…Several models (n = 7) also included interactions between individuals and their immediate food and physical activity environments , all using agent‐based modeling.…”

“…Focusing on physical activity environments, Powell‐Wiley et al examined the relationship between varying physical activity location accessibility due to crime—based on real geographic data of Washington, DC—on physical activity levels and obesity prevalence among African American women. Aziza et al presented a proof‐of‐concept model also focused solely on the physical activity environment that represented both children and activities available to them in the community as different types of agents, where children achieve moderate‐to‐vigorous activity by engaging with activities based on factors specific to themselves (eg, age, gender, and motivation to perform physical activity) and characteristics of the activity.…”

A multivalued agent-based model for the study of noncommunicable diseases

“…SimNCD (Simulation of NonCommunicable Diseases) [11] is a formal ABM that aims to help researchers and health practitioners study and simulate the dynamics of NCDs. It models individuals that evolve within a social network, and behave while engaging in activities offered by their physical environment.…”

“…We begin by describing the formal model SimNCD [11] on which our method will be based. Then, we briefly review the literature about the elements that govern the choice of activities.…”

“…All behaviors in SimNCD are modeled as autonomic interactions (i.e. actions and communications) and organized in an interaction matrix [11,15]. The overall functioning of an individual is as follows: among the perceived activities, each individual agent chooses one to practice, 95 considered as the goal activity (this behavior is modeled as an interaction I ChooseActiv ).…”