modelling human-environment interactions with terrame gilberto câmara (inpe) tiago carneiro (ufop)...

Modelling Human-Environment Interactions with TerraME

Gilberto Câmara (INPE)Tiago Carneiro (UFOP)Pedro Andrade Neto (INPE)

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Symposium in Modelling of Terrestrial Systems and Evolution, Ouro Preto, 2011

The fundamental question of our time

fonte: IGBP

How is the Earth’s environment changing, and what are the consequences for human civilization?

By 2050...8,5 billion people: 6 billion

tons of GHG and 60 million tons of urban pollutants.

Resource-hungry: We will withdraw 30% of available fresh water.

Planetary Boundaries http://www.stockholmresilience.org/

Global Change

Where are changes taking place?How much change is happening? Who is being impacted by the change?What is causing change?

Human actions and global change

photo: A. Reenberg

photo: C. Nobre

Is Computing a natural science?

“Computer science is not actually a science. It does not study natural objects. It’s about getting to do something, rather than dealing with abstractions.” (Richard Feynman)

Is Computing a natural science?

“Computing is the study of natural and artificial information processes.” (Peter Denning)

What’s in an image?

What’s in an image?

Web map (Barabasi) (could be brain connections or between scientists)

Information flows in nature

Ant colonies live in a chemical world

Conections and flows are universal

Yeast proteins(Barabasi and Boneabau,

SciAm, 2003)

Scientists in Silicon Valley(Fleming and Marx, Calif Mngt

Rew, 2006)

Information flows generate cooperation

White cells attact a cancer cell (cooperative activity)

National Cancer Institute, EUA http://visualsonline.cancer.gov

Tragedy of the Commons?

Everybody’s property is nobody’s property (Hardin)

Is the tragedy of the commons inevitable?

Experiments show that cooperation emerges if virtuous interactions exist

source: Novak, May and Sigmund (Scientific American, 1995)

Common pool resources (Elinor Ostrom)

The ultimate common pool resource

Governing the commons:institutional arrangments

[Ostrom, Science, 2005]

Elinor Ostrom on governing the commons

“Neither the state nor the market is uniformly successful in enabling individuals to sustain long-term, productive use of natural resource systems.”

Building information models

Territory(Geography)

Money(Economy)

Culture(Antropology)

Modelling(Computing)

Connect expertise from different fieldsMake the different conceptions explicit

Slides from LANDSAT

1973 1987 2000

images: USGS

Modelling Human-Environment Interactions

How do we decide on the use of natural resources?

What are the conditions favoring success in resource mgnt?

Can we anticipate changes resulting from human decisions?

What techniques and tools are needed to model human-environment decision making?

Nature: Physical equations Describe processes

Society: Decisions on how to Use Earth´s resources

We need spatially explicit models to understand human-environment interactions

f ( It+n )

. . FF

f (It) f (It+1) f (It+2)

Dynamic Spatial Models

“A dynamical spatial model is a computational representation of a real-world process where a location on the earth’s surface changes in response to variations on external and internal dynamics on the landscape” (Peter Burrough)

Cells (objects)

Question #1 for human-environment models

Fields

What social theories and concepts are required for human-environment models? Can they be translated into information systems?

Resilience

Concepts for spatial dynamical models

Events and processes

degradation


vulnerability

Human-environmental models need to describe complex concepts (and store their attributes in a database)

and much more…

biodiversity


sustainability

We need social theories to understand human-environment interactions Social simulation

Schelling, “Micromotives and macrobehavior” (1978).Batty, “Cities and complexity” (2005).

Game theoryvon Neumann and Morgenstern, “Theory of games and economic

behavior” (1944)Nash, "Equilibrium points in n-person games“ (1950).

Evolutionary dynamicsMaynard Smith, ”Evolution and the theory of games” (1982)Axelrod, “Evolution of cooperation” (1988).Novak, “Evolutionary dynamics: exploring the equations of life” (2005).

Institutional analysisOstrom, “Governing the commons” (1990).

Game Theory

GT is an analytical tool for social sciences that is used to model strategic interactions or conflict situations.

Strategic interaction: When actions of a player influence payoffs to other players

Where can we use Game Theory?

Any situation that requires us to anticipate our rival’s response to our action is a potential context for GT.

Economics, Political science, Biology

What models are needed to describe human actions?


Clocks, clouds or ants?

Clocks: deterministic equations

Clouds: statistical distributions

Ants: emerging behaviour

Statistics: Humans as clouds

Establishes statistical relationship with variables that are related to the phenomena under study

Basic hypothesis: stationary processes

y=a0 + a1x1 + a2x2 + ... +aixi +E

Fonte: Verburg et al, Env. Man., Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 391–405

Amazônia in 2007 x All Variables

Variables

Transportation (11)

Distance Markets(7)

Demography (3)

Tecnology (2)

Environmental (20)

Public Policy(8)

Market (8)

Agrarian Structure(6)

Agents as basis for complex systems

Agent: flexible, interacting and autonomous

An agent is any actor within an environment, any entity that can affect itself, the environment and other agents.

Agen

t

Spa

ce

Space Agent

Benenson and Torrens, “Geographic Automata Systems”, IJGIS, 2005(but many questions remain...)

Modelling collective spatial actions


What types of spatial relations exist in nature-society models?

Rondonia

1975 1986

Natural space is (usually) isotropicSocietal space is mostly anisotropic

Which spatial objects are closer?

Societal spaces are connected

Which cells are closer?

[Aguiar et al., 2003]

Euclidean space Open network Closed network

D2

D1

Requirement #3 for human-environment models: express connections explicitly

[Aguiar et al., 2003]


How do we combine independent multi-scale models with feedback?

Models: From Global to Local

Athmosphere, ocean, chemistry climate model (200 x 200 km)

Atmosphere only global climate model (50 x 50 km)

Regional climate model (10 x 10 km)

Hydrology, VegetationSoil Topography (1 x 1 km)

Regional land use changeSocio-economic adaptation (e.g., 100 x 100 m)


Small Farmers Medium-Sized Farmers

photos: Isabel Escada

How can we express behavioural changes in human societies?

When a small farmer becomes a medium-sized one, his behaviour changes

Societal systems undergo phase transitions

Newly implanted

Deforesting

Slowing down

latency > 6 years

Deforestation > 80%

Small Farmers

Iddle

Year of creation

Deforestation = 100%

Deforesting

Slowing downIddle

Year of creation


Deforestation > 60%

Medium-Sized Farmers

photos: Isabel Escada

TerraLib: spatio-temporal database as a basis for innovation

Visualization (TerraView)

Spatio-temporalDatabase (TerraLib)

Modelling (TerraME)

Data Mining(GeoDMA)Statistics (aRT)

G. Câmara et al.“TerraLib: An open-source GIS library for large-scale environmental and socio-economic applications”. In: B. Hall, M. Leahy (eds.), “Open Source Approaches to Spatial Data Handling”. Berlin, Springer, 2008.

TerraME: Computational environment for developing human-environment models

Cell Spaces

Support for cellular automata and agents

http://www.terrame.org[Carneiro, 2006]

Spatial structure in TerraME: Cell Spaces integrated with databases

TerraME´s approach: Modular components

Describe spatial structure

1:32:00 Mens. 11.

1:32:10 Mens. 32.

1:38:07 Mens. 23.

1:42:00 Mens.44.. . .return value

true

1. Get first pair 2. Execute the ACTION

3. Timer =EVENT

4. timeToHappen += period

Describe temporal structure

Newly implanted

Deforesting

Slowing down

latency > 6 years

Iddle

Year of creation


Describe rules of behaviour Describe spatial relations

[Carneiro, 2006]

TerraME: multi-scale modelling using explicit relationships

44434241

34333231

24232221

14131211

wwww

wwww

wwww

wwww

W

Generalized proximity matrices express explicit spatial relationships between individual objects in different scales

up-scaling

Scale 1

Scale 2

father

children

[Moreira et al., 2008][Carneiro et al., 2008]

To

Ag

en

t

Cell

a

b

a

b

c

c Cell Agent

FromGPM: Relations between cells and agents

[Andrade-Neto et al., 2008]

TerraME uses hybrid automata to represent phase transitions

State A

Flow

Condition

State B

Flow

Condition

Jump condition

A hybrid automaton is a formal model for a mixed discrete continuous system (Henzinger, 1996)

Hybrid Automata = state machine + dynamical systems

Hybrid automata: simple land tenure model

STATE Flow Condition Jump Condition Transition

SUBSISTENCE Deforest 10% of land/year Deforest > 60% CATTLE

CATTLE Extensive cattle raising Land exhaustion ABANDONMENT

ABANDONMENT Forest regrowth Land revision RECLAIM

RECLAIM Public repossession Land registration LAND REFORM

LAND REFORM Land distribution Farmer gets parcels

SUBSISTENCE

SUBSISTENCEDeforest 20%/year

Farmer gets parceldeforest>=60%

Land exhaustion

CATTLEExtensive cattle raising

ABANDONMENTRegrowth

RECLAIMPublic repossession

Land revision

LAND REFORMredistribution

Land registration

Lua and the Web

Where is Lua?

Inside Brazil Petrobras, the Brazilian Oil Company Embratel (the main telecommunication company in Brazil) many other companies

Outside Brazil Lua is used in hundreds of projects, both commercial and academic CGILua still in restricted use

until recently all documentation was in Portuguese

TerraME Programming Language: Extension of LUA

LUA is the language of choice for computer games

[Ierusalimschy et al, 1996]source: the LUA team

TerraME programming environment

Eclipse & LUA plugin• model description• model highlight syntax

TerraView• data acquisition• data visualization• data management• data analysis

TerraLibdatabase

da

ta

Model source code

MODEL DATA

mod

el

• model syntax semantic checking• model execution

TerraME INTERPRETER

LUA interpreter

TerraME framework

TerraME/LUA interface

model d

ata

[Carneiro, 2006]

Source: Carlos Nobre (INPE)

Can we avoid that this….

Fire...

Source: Carlos Nobre (INPE)

….becomes this?

Deforestation in Amazonia

~230 scenes Landsat/year

Amazonia: multiscale analysis of land change and beef and milk market chains with TerraME

Deforestation

Forest

Non-forest

Clouds/no data

INPE/PRODES 2003/2004:

São Felix do Xingu

Land use Change model

Beef and milk market chain model

Small farmers

Medium and largefarmers

Land use Change model

Small farmers

Medium and largefarmers

Landscapemetrics model

Pasture degradation

model

Several workshops to define model rules and variables

Landscape model: different rules for two main types of actors

Create pasture/Deforest

Speculator/large/small

bad land management

money surplus

Subsistenceagriculture

Diversify use

Manage cattle

Move towardsthe frontier

Abandon/Sellthe property

Buy newland

Settlement/invaded land

Sustainability path(alternative uses, technology)

Sustainability path (technology)

Small farmers in Amazonia

Create pasture/plantation/

deforest

Speculator/large/small

money surplus/bank loan

Diversify use

Buy newland

Manage cattle/plantation

Buy calvesfrom small

Buy landfrom small

farmers

Large farmers in Amazonia

Local scale

Regional scale

CATTLE CHAIN MODEL Flows: goods, information, etc.. Connections: Agents

LANDSCAPE DYNAMICS MODEL - Front- Medium- Rear

INDIVIDUAL AGENTSLarge and small farmers

Loca

l far

mer

sFr

ontie

r Re

gion

SCENARIO

S

Landscape model: different rules of behavior at different partitions which also change in time

FRENTE

MEIO

RETAGUARDA

Forest

Not ForestDeforest

River

FRONT

MIDDLE

BACK

SÃO FÉLIX DO XINGU - 2006

Modeling results 97 to 2006

Observed 97 to 2006

“Complexity is more and more acknowledged to be a key characteristic of the world welive in and of the systems that cohabit our world. It is not new for science to attempt tounderstand complex systems: astronomers have been at it for millennia, and biologists,economists, psychologists, and others joined them some generations ago. (…)

If, as appears to be the case, complexity (like systems science) is too general a subjectto have much content, then particular classes of complex systems possessing strongproperties that provide a fulcrum for theorizing and generalizing can serve as the fociof attention.” (from “The Sciences of the Artificial”, 1996)

Some caution necessary...

Herbert Simon (1958)

Modelling human-environment interactions

1. Situated individuals2. Interaction rules: semantics of communication3. Decision rules4. Properties of space

Conclusion

Computing can make a significant contribution to global change research, supporting spatially explicit models of human-environment interactions with reasoned scientific basis

modelling human-environment interactions with terrame gilberto câmara (inpe) tiago carneiro (ufop)...

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