Modeling resource conflict and inequality in fragile systems: A spatial agent-based framework with a Uganda case study
Résumé
This study develops a spatial agent-based framework for examining how unequal resource access, environmental stress, institutional support, movement, and adaptive cooperation jointly shape conflict pressure and resource inequality. A Uganda case study initializes spatial heterogeneity from WorldPop 2020 population data and CHIRPS v2.0 October-November 2025 rainfall. The primary experiment uses an 80×80 grid, 250 agents, 120 time steps, and 20 baseline seeds. Parameter dependence is evaluated using 128 Latin-hypercube designs with five stochastic replicates per design, time-aware cluster-robust regressions, partial rank correlations, dense one-at-a-time sweeps, structural ablations, and grid/agent-count robustness checks. In the baseline ensemble, the Gini coefficient rises from 0.192 to 0.868 while mean cooperation falls from 0.547 to 0.118; conflict pressure stabilizes near 0.207 after an early transient. Institutional support increases cooperation and mean resources and reduces inequality over the tested range, while also altering the interaction-level conflict index, showing that lower modeled conflict is not necessarily a better system state. Removing the resource-disparity term reduces but does not eliminate conflict, and suppressing behavioral adaptation raises final conflict by about 40% relative to the baseline. The framework is therefore best interpreted as a transparent mechanism-exploration and stress-testing tool rather than an event-forecasting model.
Citer ce document
Accès au document
Texte intégral en lecture en ligne, réservé aux abonnés SPHAERO et aux membres de l'institution. Se connecter
Voir l'article sur le site de la revueAuteur(s)
Statistiques
Consultations : 1
Téléchargements : 0