Re: calibration

[Philippe LAVAL]

At 16:17 21.04.97 +0000, Alan Penn  wrote:
>[...]
>Try this one. Perhaps the 'calibration' is in the environment. What I mean
>by this is that the configuration of the spatial environment inhabited by
>moving and stationary individuals in the ecosystem could in principle carry
>with it the 'model' (or several models) inherent in patterns of
>co-occupancy of space. 
>[...]
>
>Most geographers treat space as 'map space' in that it is essentially open
>and homogeneous in all directions, but as soon as you start to think about
>the space through which we actually move, within and between buildings,
>then the probabilities of co-presence become significantly structured. If
>you then map onto this sort of spatial configuration the locations of
>particular individual's or social groups' facilities, the places they must
>visit regularly in their daily lives, then you can create a structured, but
>essentially probabilitic set of interfaces. You could envisage a single
>spatial configuration coupled to multiple sets of group's 'programmes'
>giving rise to just the sort of latent model with multiple realisations
>that complex things like societies require.
>
>Alan Penn
>
I like your idea of space being structured by the individuals. In " The
representation of space in an object-oriented computational pelagic
ecosystem", Ecol. Modelling, 88:113-124 (1996), I tried to model space as a
shared resource accessed concurrently by individuals, in a first come,
first served basis. Here it was food that structured space. This approach
was probably adequate because the individuals were identical filter-feeders
competing for a resource distributed unevenly in  (geographical) space.

But if there are different kinds of individuals, it makes sense to consider
constraints in the accessibility of space: stronger individuals (or
individuals with higher capabilities) have access to a larger range of
geographic positions, so they may exploit more resources. Of course
resource distribution still shapes the space, in the sense that where a
resource is absent, even strong individuals get nothing. But the
superposition of different 'ambits' in the same geographic space may better
model the competition, or coexistence, of individuals in space.


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Philippe Laval
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