Publication Details

Category Text Publication
Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.5751/ES-10200-230241
Licence creative commons licence
Title (Primary) Agent-based modeling of environment-migration linkages: a review
Author Thober, J.; Schwarz, N.; Hermans, K.
Source Titel Ecology and Society
Year 2018
Department CLE
Volume 23
Issue 2
Page From art. 41
Language englisch
Keywords agent-based modeling; environmental change; fully integrated feedbacks; migration; review; social-ecological system
Abstract Environmental change can lead to human migration and vice versa. Agent-based models (ABMs) are valuable tools to study these linkages because they can represent individual migration decisions of human actors. Indeed, there is an increasing, yet small, number of ABMs that consider the natural environment in rural migration processes. Therefore, we reviewed 15 ABMs of environment-migration linkages in rural contexts to synthesize the current state of the art. The reviewed ABMs are mostly applied in tropical contexts, serve a wide range of purposes, and cover diverse scales and types of environmental factors, migration processes, and social-ecological feedbacks. We identified potential for future model development with respect to the (1) complexity of environmental influence factors, (2) representation of relevant migration flows, and (3) type of social-ecological couplings. We found that existing models tend to not include fully integrated feedbacks and provide recommendations for the further development of ABMs to contribute to an understanding of the environment-migration-nexus in the future.
Persistent UFZ Identifier https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=20726
Thober, J., Schwarz, N., Hermans, K. (2018):
Agent-based modeling of environment-migration linkages: a review
Ecol. Soc. 23 (2), art. 41 10.5751/ES-10200-230241