Multi-agent geo-simulation of crowds and control forces in conflict situations : models, application and analysis

Peu de modèles et de simulations qui décrivent les comportements de foule en situations de conflit impliquant des forces de l’ordre et des armes non-létales (NLW) existent. Ce mémoire présente des modèles d’agents de la foule et des forces de l’ordre ainsi que des NLWs dans des situations de conflit. Des groupes ainsi que leurs interactions et actions collectives sont explicitement modélisés, ce qui repousse les approches de simulation de foule existantes. Les agents sont caractérisés par des profils d’appréciation de l’agressivité et ils peuvent changer leurs comportements en relation avec la Théorie de l’identité sociale. Un logiciel a été développé et les modèles ont été calibrés avec des scénarios réalistes. Il a démontré la faisabilité technique de modèles sociaux aussi complexes pour des foules de centaines d’agents, en plus de générer des données pour évaluer l’efficacité des techniques d’intervention.Few models and simulations that describe crowd behaviour in conflict situations involving control forces and non-lethal weapons (NLW) exist. This thesis presents models for crowd agents, control forces, and NLWs in crowd control situations. Groups as well as their interactions and collective actions are explicitly modelled, which pushes further currently existing crowd simulation approaches. Agents are characterized by appreciation of aggressiveness profiles and they can change their behaviours in relation with the Social Identity theory. A software application was developed and the models were calibrated with realistic scenarios. It demonstrated the technical feasibility of such complex social models for crowds of hundreds of agents, as well generating data to assess the efficiency of intervention techniques

Naval Research Program 2021 Annual Report

NPS NRP Annual ReportThe Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Naval Research Program (NRP) is funded by the Chief of Naval Operations and supports research projects for the Navy and Marine Corps. The NPS NRP serves as a launch-point for new initiatives which posture naval forces to meet current and future operational warfighter challenges. NRP research projects are led by individual research teams that conduct research and through which NPS expertise is developed and maintained. The primary mechanism for obtaining NPS NRP support is through participation at NPS Naval Research Working Group (NRWG) meetings that bring together fleet topic sponsors, NPS faculty members, and students to discuss potential research topics and initiatives.Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Nudging lifestyles for better health outcomes: crowdsourced data and persuasive technologies for behavioural change

For at least three decades, a Tsunami of preventable poor health has continued to threaten the future prosperity of our nations. Despite its effective destructive power, our collective predictive and preventive capacity remains remarkably under-developed This Tsunami is almost entirely mediated through the passive and unintended consequences of modernisation. The malignant spread of obesity in genetically stable populations dictates that gene disposition is not a significant contributor as populations, crowds or cohorts are all incapable of experiencing a new shipment of genes in only 2-3 decades. The authors elaborate on why a supply-side approach: advancing health care delivery cannot be expected to impact health outcomes effectively. Better care sets the stage for more care yet remains largely impotent in returning individuals to disease-free states. The authors urge an expedited paradigmatic shift in policy selection criterion towards using data intensive crowd-based evidence integrating insights from system thinking, networks and nudging. Collectively these will support emerging potentialities of ICT used in proactive policy modelling. Against this background the authors proposes a solution that stated in a most compact form consists of: the provision of mundane yet high yield data through light instrumentation of crowds enabling participative sensing, real time living epidemiology separating the per unit co-occurrences which are health promoting from those which are not, nudging through persuasive technologies, serious gaming to sustain individual health behaviour change and intuitive visualisation with reliable simulation to evaluate and direct public health investments and policies in evidence-based waysJRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

Games for a new climate: experiencing the complexity of future risks

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Center Task Force Reports, a publication series that began publishing in 2009 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.This report is a product of the Pardee Center Task Force on Games for a New Climate, which met at Pardee House at Boston University in March 2012. The 12-member Task Force was convened on behalf of the Pardee Center by Visiting Research Fellow Pablo Suarez in collaboration with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre to “explore the potential of participatory, game-based processes for accelerating learning, fostering dialogue, and promoting action through real-world decisions affecting the longer-range future, with an emphasis on humanitarian and development work, particularly involving climate risk management.” Compiled and edited by Janot Mendler de Suarez, Pablo Suarez and Carina Bachofen, the report includes contributions from all of the Task Force members and provides a detailed exploration of the current and potential ways in which games can be used to help a variety of stakeholders – including subsistence farmers, humanitarian workers, scientists, policymakers, and donors – to both understand and experience the difficulty and risks involved related to decision-making in a complex and uncertain future. The dozen Task Force experts who contributed to the report represent academic institutions, humanitarian organization, other non-governmental organizations, and game design firms with backgrounds ranging from climate modeling and anthropology to community-level disaster management and national and global policymaking as well as game design.Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centr

Naval Research Program 2019 Annual Report

NPS NRP Annual ReportThe Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Naval Research Program (NRP) is funded by the Chief of Naval Operations and supports research projects for the Navy and Marine Corps. The NPS NRP serves as a launch-point for new initiatives which posture naval forces to meet current and future operational warfighter challenges. NRP research projects are led by individual research teams that conduct research and through which NPS expertise is developed and maintained. The primary mechanism for obtaining NPS NRP support is through participation at NPS Naval Research Working Group (NRWG) meetings that bring together fleet topic sponsors, NPS faculty members, and students to discuss potential research topics and initiatives.Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)This research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Meeting the Challenge of International Peace Operations: Assessing the Contribution of Technology

This report contains the proceedings of a conference held in Livermore, California September 9-10, 1996

Cultural Science

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Cultural Science introduces a new way of thinking about culture. Adopting an evolutionary and systems approach, the authors argue that culture is the population-wide source of newness and innovation; it faces the future, not the past. Its chief characteristic is the formation of groups or 'demes' (organised and productive subpopulation; 'demos'). Demes are the means for creating, distributing and growing knowledge. However, such groups are competitive and knowledge-systems are adversarial. Starting from a rereading of Darwinian evolutionary theory, the book utilises multidisciplinary resources: Raymond Williams's 'culture is ordinary' approach; evolutionary science (e.g. Mark Pagel and Herbert Gintis); semiotics (Yuri Lotman); and economic theory (from Schumpeter to McCloskey). Successive chapters argue that: -Culture and knowledge need to be understood from an externalist ('linked brains') perspective, rather than through the lens of individual behaviour; -Demes are created by culture, especially storytelling, which in turn constitutes both politics and economics; -The clash of systems - including demes - is productive of newness, meaningfulness and successful reproduction of culture; -Contemporary urban culture and citizenship can best be explained by investigating how culture is used, and how newness and innovation emerge from unstable and contested boundaries between different meaning systems; -The evolution of culture is a process of technologically enabled 'demic concentration' of knowledge, across overlapping meaning-systems or semiospheres; a process where the number of demes accessible to any individual has increased at an accelerating rate, resulting in new problems of scale and coordination for cultural science to address. The book argues for interdisciplinary 'consilience', linking evolutionary and complexity theory in the natural sciences, economics and anthropology in the social sciences, and cultural, communication and media studies in the humanities and creative arts. It describes what is needed for a new 'modern synthesis' for the cultural sciences. It combines analytical and historical methods, to provide a framework for a general reconceptualisation of the theory of culture – one that is focused not on its political or customary aspects but rather its evolutionary significance as a generator of newness and innovation

Nudging lifestyles for better health outcomes : crowsourced data and persuasive technologies for behavioural change

Analysis of lifesyle induced by cultural modernisation that are producing negative outcomes (obesity, diabetes, etc) and discussion of how social media could be harnessed together with insights from behavioural sciences to induce behavioural change