Quantifying the Effects of Norms on COVID-19 Cases Using an Agent-Based Simulation

Jan de Mooij, Davide Dell'anna, Parantapa Bhattacharya, Mehdi Dastani, Brian Logan, Samarth Swarup

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Modelling social phenomena in large-scale agent-based simulations has long been a challenge due to the computational cost of incorporating agents whose behaviors are determined by reasoning about their internal attitudes and external factors. However, COVID-19 has brought the urgency of doing this to the fore, as, in the absence of viable pharmaceutical interventions, the progression of the pandemic has primarily been driven by behaviors and behavioral interventions. In this paper, we address this problem by developing a large-scale data-driven agent-based simulation model where individual agents reason about their beliefs, objectives, trust in government, and the norms imposed by the government. These internal and external attitudes are based on actual data concerning daily activities of individuals, their political orientation, and norms being enforced in the US state of Virginia. Our model is calibrated using mobility and COVID-19 case data. We show the utility of our model by quantifying the benefits of the various behavioral interventions through counterfactual runs of our calibrated simulation.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMulti-Agent-Based Simulation XXII. MABS 2021.
EditorsKoen H. Van Dam, Nicolas Verstaevel
PublisherSpringer
Pages99-112
Number of pages14
ISBN (Print)978-3-030-94547-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Jan 2022
EventThe 22nd International Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Simulation: MABS 2021 - Virtual
Duration: 4 May 20214 May 2021

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume13128 LNAI
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Workshop

WorkshopThe 22nd International Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Simulation
Period4/05/214/05/21

Keywords

  • Computational epidemiology
  • Large-scale social simulation
  • Norm reasoning agents

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