Team: 18
School: BOSQUE SCHOOL
Area of Science: Urban Problems
Interim: Team Number : 18
School Name: Bosque School
Area of Science: Urban Problems
Project Title: Modeling Settlement Patterns
Problem Definition: Why are there so many small cities and not very many large ones?
Problem Solution: Simulating the patterns of people settling into villages, towns, or cities and then measuring the distribution of settlement sizes (how many cities there are of a certain size)Then create a slightly more complicated simulation in which the agents were biased to stop at a square that was already inhabited. This will be modeled in StarLogo.
Progress to Date:
We are beginning to write our code with out mentor, Melanie Moses. She is a researcher at UNM (New Mexico University) in Biology and Computer Science. We have created an outline with the assistance of our Adviser:
How many cities do we need?
How many blocks are filled together- limited by how many cities you can fit on screen
How many agents?
What is the basic behavior the agents need?
They need to stop randomly and their biased to stop on a square that is already inhabited.
What is the biased?
They are more likely to stop if the square is inhabited by more people
How do they move?
A random movement: The cow simulation or similar to it
Where can they settle?
They can settle next to each other but not on top of each other
List next steps
Expected Results: We expect there to be many small cities and a few large ones, because that is how it is in the real world and we hope to have our model be as close to the real world as possible.
Team Members: Julia Ottenstein, Madeleine Carey, Amber Price
Works Cited
Moses, Melanie. Personal interview. 13 Dec. 2005.
Travis, Bill. "Geography 2412 Lecture Notes." Www.colorado.edu. Fall 2003. Colorado University, Geography 2412. 15 Dec. 2005
Team Members:
Julia Ottenstein
Amber Price
Madeleine Carey
Sponsoring Teacher: Thomas Allen