Technological and social networks of a pastoralist artificial society: agent-based modeling of mobility patterns

Abstract

This paper explores the advantages of simulation to raise the question of how digital and social networks affect the mobility in a pastoralist artificial society in the context of environmental degradation. We aim to explore mechanisms and develop scenarios, which are going to be validated through further research. We use a model of a simple pastoralist society in a world without borders to migration by adding the possibility of experiencing the effects of social structures (such as family and friends) and technological networks (e.g., social media). It appears obvious that pastoralist mobility depends on other dimensions as land tenure and traditional knowledge; however, isolating these two effects and experimenting in a simple society allow us to filter the multidimensionality of mobility decisions and concentrate on comparing scenarios in several different social structures and technological network combinations. The results show an expected behavior of more connection and more mobility, and a non-linear emergent behavior where pastoralists wait for a longer amount of time to mobilize when they interact using powerful social and technological networks. This occurs until they decide to move, and then, they mobilize more quickly and strongly than they did when communication was non-existent between them. The literature on migration explains this emergent non-linear behavior.

Of Animal Husbandry and Food Production—A First Step towards a Modular Agent-Based Modelling Platform for Socio-Ecological Dynamics

“…Therefore, the individual's properties and their linkages within a population or community can be examined [12]. Due to the flexibility of ABMs, a wide range of modelling approaches has evolved that allows for the study of socio-ecological systems and human-environment interactions, e.g., [1,13], as well as animal husbandry and pastoralist land use practises, e.g., [14][15][16].…”

Cities on the Coast and Patterns of Movement between Population Growth and Diffusion

“…Depending on the particular research question, socio-natural systems under climate and environmental change, including coastal urban systems, can be studied within very different modeling approaches, including, for example, system dynamics (SD) [23][24][25][26][27] and actor-based system dynamics [28][29][30], cellular automata (CA) [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40], agent-based modeling (ABM) [41][42][43][44], the VIABLE modeling framework [45][46][47], and optimization models [48]. Another important group of approaches to modeling urban growth in the coastal zone are aimed at the assessment of multiple factors, such as coastal erosion, pollution and water quality [49], as well as a variety of site attributes essential for the strategic design of Integrated Coastal Zone Management with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods.…”