Abstracts
A prototype agent-based tool for simulating decision-making
Kevin Sprague1,Aining Zhang, Carolyn Goodfellow, Robin Becker and Jean-Willy Ileka
1Natural Resources Canada
ksprague@nrcan.gc.ca
An important factor to consider when investigating adaptation is the response of society to the perceived current and projected state of a changing world, leading to actions designed to maximize those things that decision makers and/or their constituents value the most. Mapping the response of the agricultural sector in a piece of the Canadian Prairies to various climate change scenarios at the soil polygon level is attempted with the aid of an agent-based model that focuses on the decision-making component. In the initial agent-based modelling scheme, we propose to model decision making via the following mechanism: each soil polygon is assigned an agent that decides which crop(s) to plant and the associated management practice to adopt based on knowledge of the “expected” financial implications of the various planting and management options. Here, the goal of an agent is to maximize personal financial gain and income stability on a year-to-year basis by optimally adapting to the environment of a dynamically evolving system that involves the economy, climate, crop growth etc. Since we are dealing with soil polygons consisting of many individuals, such a characterization is understood to be aggregate in nature. We have opted to characterize the personas of decision makers using only a few basic types within the spatial regions of interest. The idea is to run the simulation under climate change scenarios and compare with runs under ‘no climate change’ to isolate an estimate of the climate change impact.
2005-04-05 |
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