Arma Veirana

Arma Vairana is located near the town of Cerisola in Northern Italy, 10 km from the Mediterranean Sea. The area is mountainous (right down to the coast), and the cave is located in a steep-walled valley within the mountains. The entrance to the cave is blocked by a sizeable rock fall, but inside it is large, being roughly 40 meters in horizontal depth. It is a phreatic tube with a triangular form. Recently, it has been recorded as an archaeological site by the local authorities, although it has never been officially excavated. Informal investigation was carried out by an amateur archaeologist, who opened up several small excavation pits. These revealed deposits containing Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic artifacts and zooarchaeological remains. The Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic layers are separated by sediments, which (from cursory inspection) appear to be culturally sterile; however, Uluzzian layers do not always exhibit high artifact densities . Thus, a key focus of the project will be the careful documentation of the layer separating the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. Geoarchaeologically, the site is interesting because it underwent some erosion that has exposed the deposits on the surface. The erosion is likely a result of the partial collapse of the entrance to the cave

BDI vs FSM Agents in Social Simulations for Raising Awareness in Disasters

International audienceEach summer in Australia, bushfires burn many hectares of forest, causing deaths, injuries, and destroying property. Agent-based simulation is a powerful tool to test various management strategies on a simulated population, and to raise awareness of the actual population behaviour. But valid results depend on realistic underlying models. This article describes two simulations of the Australian population's behaviour during bushfires designed in previous work, one based on a finite-state machine architecture, the other based on a belief-desire-intention agent architecture. It then proposes several contributions towards more realistic agent-based models of human behaviour: a methodology and tool for easily designing BD Imodels; a number of objective and subjective criteria for comparing agent-based models; a comparison of our two models along these criteria, showing that BDI provides better explanability and understandability of behaviour, makes models easier to extend, and is therefore best adapted; and a discussion of possible extensions of BDI models to further improve their realism