Agent-Based Modeling for Community Resource Management: Acequia-based Agriculture

Supporting material:

Download model

Download source code and data (requires MASON to Run)

Read more about default parameters and parameter sensitivity tests here.


Animations of Simulation Outcomes 

 

 

Background Papers

Wise, S. and Crooks, A.T. (2012), Agent Based Modelling and GIS for Community Resource Management: Acequia-based Agriculture, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 36(6): 562-572. (pdf)

Wise, S. and Crooks, A. T. (2011), Agent Based Modelling and GIS for Community Resource Management: Acequia-based Agriculture, Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Geocomputation, University College London, London, England, pp 388-394.(pdf) (presentation).

Default Parameters

 

Parciante Costs
acequiaCostWeight	5
cropPrices	10
Acequia Processes
rainfallThisYear	15
acequiaDecayRate	.99
hydrationCutoff	20
Real Estate Costs
weightUtility	.5
weightProximity	.5
budgetStdDev	10
budgetThisYear	100
numRealEstateAgents	10

Results
A series of results from the model.

Rainfall
A comparison of average results of simulation run with varying levels of rainfall, with all other parameters set to default values:

Rainfall
Scenario	% Loss of Land (tiles)	% Loss of Parciantes	% Loss of Acequias
Default - 15	1.1	20.0	59.9
Drought - 1	10.5	19.9	59.9
Flood - 50	0.2	6.4	57.6

Real Estate Agents
A comparison of average results of simulation run with varying numbers of Real Estate agents, with all other parameters set to default values:

Real Estate Agents
Scenario	% Loss of Land (tiles)	% Loss of Parciantes	% Loss of Acequias
Default - 10	1.1	20.0	59.9
0 Realtors	0.0	0.0	56.3
100 Realtors	5.6	99.9	99.9

Costs versus Culture
A comparison of the results of the nine scenarios with varying acequia maintenance costs and Parciante attitude distributions. The "Traditionalist" strategy profile entails that 80% of the Parciantes were Traditionalists, 10% were Followers, and 10% were Prodigals. Likewise the "Followers" strategy profile has 80% of its Parciantes as Followers, and so forth.

Maintenance Costs versus Cultural Valuation
Cost = 1
Scenario	% Loss of Land (tiles)	% Loss of Parciantes	% Loss of Acequias
Traditionalists	0.9	14.0	59.0
Followers	0.9	14.0	59.0
Prodigals	0.9	13.8	58.9
Cost = 5
Traditionalists	1.1	20.0	59.8
Followers	1.2	20.0	59.8
Prodigals	1.1	20.0	59.8
Cost = 15
Traditionalists	1.2	21.0	60.1
Followers	1.2	21.0	60.1
Prodigals	1.2	21.0	60.0

 

Parameter Sweep
The following data is taken from 4430 runs of the simulation under various parameters, and represents the system as all of the parameters vary. Rainfall is held constant at 1. A .csv file of this data is available here.