Publications

Purpose Synchromodal transport incorporates real-time events in a dynamic manner in order to facilitate the most suitable selection of modes, routes and handling points. Up until now, current modeling approaches that focus on the dynamic context of synchromodal transport make use of analytical models. Most of these models average distances for barges and trains via route mapping platforms that provide realistic distances for road only. To ...

Agent-based computational simulation models can be complex and this can make it difficult to understand which processes are driving model behaviour. Sensitivity analysis by means of metamodels can greatly facilitate the understanding of the behaviour of complex simulation models. However, this method has so far largely been neglected in agent-based computational demography, with few exceptions. In this chapter, I illustrate how sensitivity ...

Social scientists increasingly construe social life as a complex dynamic process, in which macro-level properties of social systems can emerge from individual’s actions in unexpected, unintended, and possibly undesirable ways. Reputation and status differentiation are important examples. This chapter discusses how agent-based computational modelling (ABCM) can be used to better understand the social processes by which the behavioural dynamics ...

In this paper, we extend the model of wound healing by Boon et al. (J Biomech 49(8):1388-1401, 2016). In addition to explaining the model explicitly regarding every component, namely cells, signalling molecules and tissue bundles, we categorized fibroblasts as regular fibroblasts and myofibroblasts. We do so since it is widely documented that myofibroblasts play a significant role during wound healing and skin contraction and that they are the ...

Emergence is a term used to describe the appearance of novel and complex properties, behaviors, or patterns from the interactions of simpler components within a system. This term, also known as "phase transitions", poses challenges for predicting the system behaviors by analyzing its individual parts in isolation. One useful computational paradigm to understand such emergent behaviors is Agent-based Modelling (AbM), which explicitly models the ...

This article presents an accessible introduction to agent-based modelling for non-computational linguists, more specifically historical linguists, who may find it to be a useful addition to their methodological toolbox. We will discuss both the possibilities and limitations of this technique and in doing so, attempt to show how computational modelling can be complementary with the empirical methods of historical linguists. Furthermore, this ...

One limitation of corpus‐based research into the epicentre hypothesis is that it only provides information on structural similarity/difference of varieties but not on the role that attitudes may play in the choice of variants in a pluricentric language. In our case study on verb complementation patterns, we use simulation as a complementary methodology. We build an agent‐based model for two speaker communities with English as a second language ...

Around the middle of the 20th century, most Western countries experienced a surge in birth rates, called the Baby Boom. This boom was unexpected at the time and the underlying mechanisms are still not entirely clear. It was characterized by high levels of inter- and intra-country variability in fertility, as some regions even experienced fertility decline during the Boom. In this paper, we suggest that social influence processes, propelling a ...

Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2016. How closely integrated were the commercial centres of the Roman world? Were traders aware of supply and demand for goods in other cities, or were communities of traders in cities protectionist and working opportunistically? Widely traded commodities such as terra sigillata tablewares in the Eastern Mediterranean provide an ideal opportunity to explore the economic processes that underlie the ...

Skin contraction is an important biophysical process that takes place during and after recovery of deep tissue injury. This process is mainly caused by fibroblasts (skin cells) and myofibroblasts (differentiated fibroblasts) that exert pulling forces on the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM). Modelling is done in multiple scales: agent-based modelling on the microscale and continuum-based modelling on the macroscale. In this manuscript we ...