Modeling multi-level patterns of environmental migration in Bangladesh: An agent-based approach

Best, Kelsea B.; Qu, Ao; Gilligan, Jonathan M.

doi:10.1109/WSC52266.2021.9715380

Kelsea B. Best, Ao Qu, & Jonathan M. Gilligan, Modeling multi-level patterns of environmental migration in Bangladesh: An agent-based approach, in S. Kim, B. Feng, K. Smith, S. Masoud, Z. Zhang, C. Czabo, & M. Lopez (eds.), Proceedings of the 2021 Winter Simulation Conference (IEEE Press 2021). DOI PDF

Abstract:

Environmental change interacts with population migration in complex ways that depend on interactions between impacts on individual households and on communities. These coupled individual-collective dynamics make agent-based simulations useful for studying environmental migration. We present an original agent-based model that simulates environment-migration dynamics in terms of the impacts of natural hazards on labor markets in rural communities, with households deciding whether to migrate based on maximizing their expected income. We use a pattern-oriented approach that seeks to reproduce observed patterns of environmentally-driven migration in Bangladesh. The model is parameterized with empirical data and unknown parameters are calibrated to reproduce the observed patterns. This model can reproduce these patterns, but only for a narrow range of parameters. Future work will compare income-maximizing decisions to psychologically complex decision heuristics that include non-economic considerations.