Handbook of Real-World Applications in Modeling and Simulation

Chapter Two

Human Behavior Modeling: A Real-World Application

John A. Sokolowski

2.1 Introduction and Learning Objectives

The representation of human behavior in a computational form has proven to be a difficult task with many approaches. While the modeling and simulation community is able to represent physical systems with a high degree of accuracy and validity, the ability to represent the behavior of humans is not nearly as advanced because of the relative complexity of the human system. Historically, human behavior modeling has been broken down into various parts, which are addressed in separate models. Examples include cognitive models, decision-making models, and perception models. To provide a complete treatment of all human behavior modeling endeavors is beyond the scope of this chapter; rather, it will focus on one aspect of human behavior, that of modeling decision-making. It will illustrate one approach to this subject via a case study on a specific methodology as an illustration of how this type of modeling could be accomplished. Specifically, it will describe how an agent-based model with artificial intelligence (AI) capability was used to model how senior military commanders make decisions.

2.2 Background and Theory

To understand how to approach modeling the human decision process one must first look at the theories put forth on this subject. There are two broad camps when it comes to describing the human decision process, that of classical decision theory and its ...