This review outlines the benefits of using multiple approaches to improve model design and facilitate multidisciplinary research into infectious diseases, as well as showing and proposing practical examples of effective integration. It looks particularly at the benefits of using participatory research in conjunction with traditional modelling methods to potentially improve disease research, con...

This paper presents a Multi Agent Systems (MAS) approach to crowd modelling, based on the Situated Cellular Agents (SCA) model. This is a special class of Multilayered Multi Agent Situated System (MMASS), providing an explicit representation of spatial structures and different means of agent interaction. Heterogenous agents may be obtained through the definition of different agent types, specif...

In a recent article (Dormann et al., 2012, Journal of Biogeography, 39, 2119–2131), we compared different approaches to species distribution modelling and depicted modelling approaches along an axis from purely ‘correlative’ to ‘forward processbased’ models. In their correspondence, Kriticos et al. (2013, Journal of Biogeography, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2012.02791.x) challenge this view, claimi...

No retail store choice model, no matter how many relevant variables it might include, can realistically expect to model all the variation in store choice. There are always some variables that are left out, because they are difficult to measure, they have not yet been conceptualized in theory, or their estimated parameter stability suffers when an excessive number of predictors are included. Bec...

Observed and unobserved characteristics of an individual are often used by researchers to explain choices over the provision of environmental goods. One means for identifying what is typically an unobserved characteristic, such as an attitude, is through some data reduction technique, such as factor analysis. However, the resultant variable represents the true attitude with measurement error, a...

The probabilistic fuzzy set (PFS) and the related probabilistic fuzzy logic system (PFLS) is designed for handling the uncertainties in both stochastic and nonstochastic nature. In this paper, a bell-shaped probabilistic fuzzy set is proposed and the related PFLS is constructed and applied to a modeling problem to study stochastic modeling capability. It clearly discloses that the bell-shaped P...

This work aims at recovering the temporal structure of a broadcast tennis video from an analysis of the raw footage. Our method relies on a statistical model of the interleaving of shots, in order to group shots into predefined classes representing structural elements of a tennis video. This stochastic modeling is performed in the global framework of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The fundamental...

The problem of term structure of interest rates modelling is considered in a continuous-time framework. The emphasis is on the bond prices, forward bond prices and so-called LIBOR rates, rather than on the instantaneous continuously compounded rates as in most traditional models. Forward and spot probability measures are introduced in this general set-up. Two conditions of noarbitrage between b...

A stochastic model for a cold standby system of two identical units is developed in which unit fails completely either directly from normal mode or via partial failure. The unit undergoes preventive maintenance (PM) after a maximum operation time (MOT) at its partial failure stage (PFS). There is a single server who visits the system immediately as and when needed to do preventive maintenance a...