DDD home
Do Irregular Grids make a Difference? Relaxing the Spatial Regularity Assumption in Cellular Models of Social Dynamics
Author(s): Andreas Flache, Rainer Hegselmann
Keywords: Cellular Automata; Sensitivity Analysis; Social Simulation
ABSTRACT
Three decades of CA-modelling in the social sciences have shown that the cellular automata framework is a
useful tool to explore the relationship between micro assumptions and macro outcomes in social dynamics.
However, virtually all CA-applications in the social sciences rely on a potentially highly restrictive assumption, a
rectangular grid structure. In this paper, we relax this assumption and introduce irregular grids with variation in
the structure and size of neighbourhoods between locations in the grid. We test robustness of two applications
from our previous work that are representative for two broad classes of CA models, migration dynamics and
influence dynamics. We tentatively conclude that both influence dynamics and migration dynamics have
important general properties that are robust to variation in the grid structure. At the same time, we find in both
examples substantively interesting implications of the irregular grid that could not be identified with a regular
grid structure.
