Alderton Simon, Noble Jason, Schaten Kathrin, Welburn Susan C, Atkinson Peter M
Institute of Complex System Simulation, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom; Geography and Environment, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.
Institute of Complex System Simulation, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2015 Sep 30;10(9):e0139505. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0139505. eCollection 2015.
In this research, an agent-based model (ABM) was developed to generate human movement routes between homes and water resources in a rural setting, given commonly available geospatial datasets on population distribution, land cover and landscape resources. ABMs are an object-oriented computational approach to modelling a system, focusing on the interactions of autonomous agents, and aiming to assess the impact of these agents and their interactions on the system as a whole. An A* pathfinding algorithm was implemented to produce walking routes, given data on the terrain in the area. A* is an extension of Dijkstra's algorithm with an enhanced time performance through the use of heuristics. In this example, it was possible to impute daily activity movement patterns to the water resource for all villages in a 75 km long study transect across the Luangwa Valley, Zambia, and the simulated human movements were statistically similar to empirical observations on travel times to the water resource (Chi-squared, 95% confidence interval). This indicates that it is possible to produce realistic data regarding human movements without costly measurement as is commonly achieved, for example, through GPS, or retrospective or real-time diaries. The approach is transferable between different geographical locations, and the product can be useful in providing an insight into human movement patterns, and therefore has use in many human exposure-related applications, specifically epidemiological research in rural areas, where spatial heterogeneity in the disease landscape, and space-time proximity of individuals, can play a crucial role in disease spread.
在本研究中,基于可获取的关于人口分布、土地覆盖和景观资源的常见地理空间数据集,开发了一种基于主体的模型(ABM),用于生成农村环境中家庭与水资源之间的人类移动路线。ABM是一种面向对象的系统建模计算方法,专注于自主主体的相互作用,旨在评估这些主体及其相互作用对整个系统的影响。给定该地区地形数据,实施A寻路算法以生成步行路线。A是迪杰斯特拉算法的扩展,通过使用启发式方法提高了时间性能。在这个例子中,能够将日常活动移动模式归因于赞比亚卢安瓜山谷一条75公里长的研究样带中所有村庄的水资源,并且模拟的人类移动在统计上与前往水资源的出行时间的实证观察结果相似(卡方检验,95%置信区间)。这表明无需像通常那样通过GPS、回顾性或实时日记等方式进行昂贵的测量,就有可能生成关于人类移动的现实数据。该方法可在不同地理位置之间转移,其成果有助于深入了解人类移动模式,因此可用于许多与人类暴露相关的应用,特别是农村地区的流行病学研究,在这些研究中,疾病景观的空间异质性以及个体的时空接近性在疾病传播中可能起着关键作用。