Agent-Based Modeling of Environmental Conflict and Cooperation

2018-10-12 Law

Author : Todd K. BenDor
Release : 2018-10-12
Genre : Law
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 244/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Agent-Based Modeling of Environmental Conflict and Cooperation by : Todd K. BenDor

Download or read book Agent-Based Modeling of Environmental Conflict and Cooperation written by Todd K. BenDor. This book was released on 2018-10-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflict is a major facet of many environmental challenges of our time. However, growing conflict complexity makes it more difficult to identify win-win strategies for sustainable conflict resolution. Innovative methods are needed to help predict, understand, and resolve conflicts in cooperative ways. Agent-Based Modeling of Environmental Conflict and Cooperation examines computer modeling techniques as an important set of tools for assessing environmental and resource-based conflicts and, ultimately, for finding pathways to conflict resolution and cooperation. This book has two major goals. First, it argues that complexity science can be a unifying framework for professions engaged in conflict studies and resolution, including anthropology, law, management, peace studies, urban planning, and geography. Second, this book presents an innovative framework for approaching conflicts as complex adaptive systems by using many forms of environmental analysis, including system dynamics modeling, agent-based modeling, evolutionary game theory, viability theory, and network analysis. Known as VIABLE (Values and Investments from Agent-Based interaction and Learning in Environmental systems), this framework allows users to model advanced facets of conflicts—including institution building, coalition formation, adaptive learning, and the potential for future conflict—and conflict resolution based on the long-term viability of the actors’ strategies. Written for scholars, students, practitioners, and policy makers alike, this book offers readers an extensive introduction to environmental conflict research and resolution techniques. As the result of decades of research, the text presents a strong argument for conflict modeling and reviews the most popular and advanced techniques, including system dynamics modeling, agent-based modeling, and participatory modeling methods. This indispensable guide uses NetLogo, a widely used and free modeling software package, to implement the VIABLE modeling approach in three case study applications around the world. Readers are invited to explore, adapt, modify, and expand these models to conflicts they hope to better understand and resolve.

Navigating the Complexity Across the Peace–Sustainability–Climate Security Nexus

2023-11-28 Science

Author : Bernard Amadei
Release : 2023-11-28
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 039/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Navigating the Complexity Across the Peace–Sustainability–Climate Security Nexus by : Bernard Amadei

Download or read book Navigating the Complexity Across the Peace–Sustainability–Climate Security Nexus written by Bernard Amadei. This book was released on 2023-11-28. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Promoting peace and sustainability in human development while accounting for the risks associated with the impact of climate change on society has become more imperative than ever when addressing humanity's challenges of the twenty-first century. There is enough evidence that peace, sustainability, and climate security are entangled with multiple complex interactions and cannot be dealt with in isolation and independently from the environment and the numerous systems with which they interact. Yet, the intersection of peace, sustainability, and climate security or their opposites (i.e., conflict, unsustainability, and climate vulnerability) is rarely articulated with a systemic mindset. A multi-solving nexus approach is more appropriate to capture the complexity and uncertainty of how the three sectors of peace, sustainability, and climate security play a role in community development, the nature of their causal chains, and the feedback on how community development affects the three sectors. Navigating the Complexity Across the Peace–Sustainability–Climate Security Nexus explores the value proposition of using a systems approach, methodology, and tools to comprehend and model that dynamic. Features of the book: Explores the interaction between the different components of peace and the relationship between peace, sustainability, and climate security using semi-qualitative and quantitative tools; Explains how climate adaptation and mitigation are related to peace or conflict; Presents generic system dynamics modeling that can be used in different contexts.

Lewis Fry Richardson: His Intellectual Legacy and Influence in the Social Sciences

2019-12-10 Law

Author : Nils Petter Gleditsch
Release : 2019-12-10
Genre : Law
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 894/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Lewis Fry Richardson: His Intellectual Legacy and Influence in the Social Sciences by : Nils Petter Gleditsch

Download or read book Lewis Fry Richardson: His Intellectual Legacy and Influence in the Social Sciences written by Nils Petter Gleditsch. This book was released on 2019-12-10. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access book. Lewis F Richardson (1981-1953), a physicist by training, was a pioneer in meteorology and peace research and remains a towering presence in both fields. This edited volume reviews his work and assesses its influence in the social sciences, notably his work on arms races and their consequences, mathematical models, the size distribution of wars, and geographical features of conflict. It contains brief bibliographies of his main publications and of articles and books written about Richardson and his work and discusses his continuing influence in peace research and international relations as well as his attitude to the ethical responsibilities of a scientist. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars. This book includes 11 chapters written by Nils Petter Gleditsch, Dina A Zinnes, Ron Smith, Paul F Diehl, Kelly Kadera, Mark Crescenzi, Michael D Ward, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, Nils B Weidmann, Jürgen Scheffran, Niall MacKay, Aaron Clauset, Michael Spagat and Stijn van Weezel. Lewis F Richardson occupied an important position in two academic fields as different as meteorology and peace research, with academic prizes awarded in both disciplines. In peace research, he pioneered the use of mathematical models and the meticulous compilation of databases for empirical research. As a quaker and pacifist, he refused to work in preparations for war, paid a heavy prize in terms of his career, and (at least in the social sciences) was fully recognized as a pioneering scholar only posthumously with the publication of two major books. Lewis Fry Richardson is one of the 20th century’s greatest but least appreciated thinkers—a creative physicist, psychologist, meteorologist, applied mathematician, historian, pacifist, statistician, and witty stylist. If you’ve heard of weather prediction, chaos, fractals, cliometrics, peace science, big data, thick tails, or black swans, then you have benefited from Richardson’s prescience in bringing unruly phenomena into the ambit of scientific understanding. Richardson’s ideas continue to be relevant today, and this collection is a superb retrospective on this brilliant and lovable man. Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor, Harvard University, and the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now

Agent-Based Modeling of Social Conflict

2017-10-24 Social Science

Author : Carlos M. Lemos
Release : 2017-10-24
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 506/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Agent-Based Modeling of Social Conflict by : Carlos M. Lemos

Download or read book Agent-Based Modeling of Social Conflict written by Carlos M. Lemos. This book was released on 2017-10-24. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Brief revisits and extends Epstein’s classical agent-based model of civil violence by considering important mechanisms suggested by social conflict theories. Among them are: relative deprivation as generator of hardship, generalized vanishing of the risk perception (‘massive fear loss’) when the uprisings surpass a certain threshold, endogenous legitimacy feedback, and network influence effects represented by the mechanism of dispositional contagion. The model is explored in a set of computer experiments designed to provide insight on how mechanisms lead to increased complexity of the solutions. The results of the simulations are compared with statistical analyses of estimated size, duration and recurrence of large demonstrations and riots for eight African countries affected by the “Arab Spring,” based on the Social Conflict Analysis Database. It is shown that the extensions to Epstein’s model proposed herein lead to increased “generative capacity” of the agent-based model (i.e. a richer set of meaningful qualitative behaviors) as well the identification of key mechanisms and associated parameters with tipping points. The use of quantitative information (international indicators and statistical analyses of conflict events) allows the assessment of the plausibility of input parameter values and simulated results, and thus a better understanding of the model’s strengths and limitations. The contributions of the present work for understanding how mechanisms of large scale conflict lead to complexbehavior include a new form of the estimated arrest probability, a simple representation of political vs economic deprivation with a parameter which controls the `sensitivity' to value, endogenous legitimacy feedback, and the effect of network influences (due to small groups and “activists”). In addition, the analysis of the Social Conflict Analysis Database provided a quantitative description of the impact of the “Arab Spring” in several countries focused on complexity issues such as peaceful vs violent, spontaneous vs organized, and patterns of size, duration and recurrence of conflict events in this recent and important large-scale conflict process. This book will appeal to students and researchers working in these computational social science subfields.

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Agent-Based Modeling of Environmental Conflict and Cooperation

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