The Modelling Of Human Behaviour

This volume is designed as a 12-lecture textbook, which can serve as a course companion, self teaching guide and handbook for basic concepts. Each lecture comprises 20 pages, in which the methods are introduced, examples shown and the code is given. All examples are computed with open source software, mainly R, and with archaeological data available from the book's website. The book does not describe elaborated high-end models but rather very basic modelling concepts that serve as components in more complex models. The book enables the reader to construct such models by themselves and be sensitive for certain problems. In addition it gives hints for the interpretation of the results. Students are usually quick to apply fancy methods yet fail in the proper interpretation due to a lack of understanding of the underlying principles. This problem is addressed by the proposed book through three concepts: 1. Command line software forces the students to first learn some details before they are able to produce results on their own. 2. The book is focused on principles and methods. When the students understand a few basic principles, they have far better access to a wide range of related methods. 3. Examples of poor analysis highlight common pitfalls. The volume attempts to be an applied, minimalistic and efficient textbook and is based upon several successful courses.

This volume summarizes the state-of-the-art in the fast growing research area of modeling the influence of information-driven human behavior on the spread and control of infectious diseases. In particular, it features the two main and inter-related “core” topics: behavioral changes in response to global threats, for example, pandemic influenza, and the pseudo-rational opposition to vaccines. In order to make realistic predictions, modelers need to go beyond classical mathematical epidemiology to take these dynamic effects into account. With contributions from experts in this field, the book fills a void in the literature. It goes beyond classical texts, yet preserves the rationale of many of them by sticking to the underlying biology without compromising on scientific rigor. Epidemiologists, theoretical biologists, biophysicists, applied mathematicians, and PhD students will benefit from this book. However, it is also written for Public Health professionals interested in understanding models, and to advanced undergraduate students, since it only requires a working knowledge of mathematical epidemiology.

This book analyses human behaviour from an individual and organizational perspective. Based on cutting-edge research, each chapter is focused on modeling human behaviour in different fields and takes into account uncertain environments by applying innovative quantitative and qualitative approaches. The book deals with the decision-making process of not only individuals behaving as economic agents who consume, save, produce and invest, but also with organizations such as families, firms, public entities and even countries. The book comprises the most contemporary topics. Each chapter challenges the reader by describing the approaches employed and providing insight into the pillars of Western societies: Public policy, public health, public education, economic and financial markets, citizen security and demographics. This book deals with trendy issues and providing answers to socio-economic dilemmas.

This unique book brings together a comprehensive set of papers on the background, theory, technical issues and applications of agent-based modelling (ABM) within geographical systems. This collection of papers is an invaluable reference point for the experienced agent-based modeller as well those new to the area. Specific geographical issues such as handling scale and space are dealt with as well as practical advice from leading experts about designing and creating ABMs, handling complexity, visualising and validating model outputs. With contributions from many of the world’s leading research institutions, the latest applied research (micro and macro applications) from around the globe exemplify what can be achieved in geographical context. This book is relevant to researchers, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students, and professionals in the areas of quantitative geography, spatial analysis, spatial modelling, social simulation modelling and geographical information sciences.

Modeling Human Behavior With Integrated Cognitive Architectures summarizes the results of four years of collaborative research within the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research.

Simulations are widely used in the military for training personnel, analyzing proposed equipment, and rehearsing missions, and these simulations need realistic models of human behavior. This book draws together a wide variety of theoretical and applied research in human behavior modeling that can be considered for use in those simulations. It covers behavior at the individual, unit, and command level. At the individual soldier level, the topics covered include attention, learning, memory, decisionmaking, perception, situation awareness, and planning. At the unit level, the focus is on command and control. The book provides short-, medium-, and long-term goals for research and development of more realistic models of human behavior.

One of the major limitations of the Ambient Intelligent Systems today is the lack of semantic models of those activities on the environment, so that the system can recognize the specific activity being performed by the user(s) and act accordingly. In this context, this thesis addresses the general problem of knowledge representation in Smart Spaces. The main objective is to develop knowledge-based models, equipped with semantics to learn, infer and monitor human behaviours in Smart Spaces. Moreover, it is easy to recognize that some aspects of this problem have a high degree of uncertainty, and therefore, the developed models must be equipped with mechanisms to manage this type of information. As an added value, this system should be sufficiently simple and flexible to be managed by non-expert users, and thus, facilitate the transfer of research to industry. To do this, we develop graphical models to represent human behaviour in Smart Spaces, in order to provide them with more usability in the final application. As a result, human behaviour recognition can help assisting people with special needs such as independent elders, in remote rehabilitation monitoring, industrial process guidelines, and many other cases.