Obesity Epidemic Simulation Based on Behavioral Models and Intelligent Agents

This research work is aimed at proposing a simulation model based on Intelligent Agents devoted to reproduce human behavior influence over the evolution and impact of obesity epidemics. Indeed, obesity is a real big problem for both USA and European countries, so it is necessary to take under control this phenomenon and, above all, to support Agencies and Nations with simulation models in order to promote specific actions, to guarantee population healthy and to reduce the related social costs. To this end, taking advantage of previous experiences on Human Behavior Models, a Library including Intelligent Agents for Computer Generated Forces (IA-CGF Libraries) has been developed. This library is conceived to reproduce complex scenarios with particular attention to non-conventional frameworks on the progression of obesity epidemics in the world where human behaviors play a crucial role. As for the simulation models test, calibration and validation, two scenarios with different underlying social and cultural conditions have been considered and compared, namely: Italy (obesity prevalence ~10%) and U.S.A. (obesity prevalence ~35%). This way, it has been possible to gain fruitful insights about how simulation models evolve over different social and cultural conditions in different countries.