Agent-Based Modeling of Internal Migration

描述（由申请人提供）：基于Agent的中国农村-城市迁移建模我们建议开发一个大规模的基于Agent的中国农村-城市迁移模型。国家内部和国家之间的大规模移徙正在改变世界人口。基于代理的建模（ABM）是一个有前途的和未充分利用的手段，了解这些复杂的人口分布和增长的移民的影响，因为它可以包括反馈回路，允许演员的地方互动，并揭示意外的，新兴的复杂系统的迁移属性。ABM的最新发展，特别是高效使用强大的计算集群来估计具有数十亿参与者的模型的算法（帕克和Epstein 2011），使这种技术特别有希望用于建模大型复杂的空间过程。因此，我们认为，发展ABM来研究大规模迁移是一项创新，对人口具有高度的科学优先性 research.中国是发展第一个此类模式的绝佳选择，因为自20世纪80年代中期以来，中国经历了世界历史上最大规模的单次人口迁移，到2011年转移了约2.3亿农村人口，占中国总人口的17.4%（中国国家统计局，2012年）。中国农村人口中大约有一半是从内陆省份的农村迁移到城市化的沿海地区。农村移民被吸引到沿海地区，主要是因为出口导向型产业和移民网络的高就业前景（Hao等人，2013年）。这一巨大的人口转移具有全球经济、人口、健康和政治影响。虽然它的重要性是有据可查的，但几乎没有做什么来确定和测试基本的因果机制。中国大规模移民的规模和持续时间为深入了解这一重要历史现象提供了一个独特的机会。该项目将（1）通过重新制定和改进现有理论来探索、发展和验证概念模型，以应用于中国的农村-城市迁移;（2）建立一个大规模的基于主体的中国农村-城市迁移模型，使用经验校准的初始条件、事前结构参数和事后实验的“开放”参数，（3）检验基本案例模型中各成分理论的解释力;（4）探索在不同的政策、经济条件、个人偏好和初始人口条件下，基本案例模型的动态结果，（5）找到大规模移民的一般原理，并提出和发表我们的方法和结果，以便ABM可以应用于其他大规模、复杂的移民流。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Agent-based Modeling of Rural-urban Migration in China We propose to develop a large-scale agent-based model of rural-to-urban migration in China. Large-scale migrations, both within countries and across countries, are transforming the world's population. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a promising and underutilized means for understanding the implications of these complex migrations for population distribution and growth because it can include feedback loops, allow actor-place interactions, and reveal unexpected, emergent properties of the complex system of migration. Recent developments in ABM, notably algorithms for the efficient use of powerful computing clusters to estimate models with billions of actors (Parker and Epstein 2011), make this technique especially promising for modeling large, complex spatial processes. Thus, we would argue that the development of ABM to study large-scale migrations is an innovation that is of high scientific priority for population research. China is an excellent choice for the development of the first such model because it has, since the mid-1980s, undergone the largest single migration in the world's history, transferring some 230 million rural people by 2011, accounting for 17.4% of China's total population (Chinese National Bureau of Statistics 2012). About half of China's rural migration is from the rural inner provinces to the urbanized coast. Rural migrants are drawn to coastal areas primarily because of the high employment prospects in export-oriented industries and migrant networks (Hao et al. 2013). This monumental population shift has global economic, demographic, health, and political ramifications. While its importance is well documented, little has been done to identify and test the basic underlying causal mechanisms. The scale and duration of China's mass migration present a unique opportunity to gain valuable insights into this important historical phenomenon. The project will (1) explore, develop, and validate the conceptual model by reformulating and improving existing theories to apply to China's rural-urban migration; (2) develop a large-scale agent-based model of rural-urban migration in China, using empirically calibrated initial conditions, ex ante structural parameters, and "open" parameters to be experimented ex post, and validate the simulated stylized patterns against the reality; (3) test the explanatory power of each of the component theories integrated in our base-case model; (4) explore the dynamic outcomes of the base-case model under varying policies, economic conditions, individual preferences, and initial population conditions, and (5) find general principles of mass migration and to produce and publish our methods and results so that ABM can be applied to other large, complex migration flows.