Modeling the Health of Refugee Camps: An Agent-Based Computational Approach

This paper reports the construction of an agent-based model that has been used to study humanitarian assistance policies executed by governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in a synthetic environment. We create intelligent agents representing institutions, organizations, individuals, infrastructure, and governments. The resulting interactions and emergent behaviors are analyzed using a central composite design of experiments with five factors. The results indicate that the introduction of actions on NGOs leads to a change in the peripheral/regional environment and refugee wellbeing. This is due to the changes produced in refugees´ perception of basic needs, social needs, and security, as well as the fluctuations in the supply of medical and personnel resources