CSED’s Large-Scale Agent Model
Wins “Outstanding” Award

On March 11, 2008, the Brookings Center on Social and Economic Dynamics (CSED) Large-Scale Agent Model (LSAM) won the NTSA 2008 Modeling & Simulation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Analysis. The National Training and Simulation Association annually recognizes the top achievements in the development of modeling and simulation applications, and this year’s award was presented at the Defense Modeling & Simulation Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The LSAM is a flexible, large-scale, distributed agent-based model that is capable of simulating several billion agents. Developed by Jon Parker, Assistant Director of Modeling and Simulation, and CSED Director Joshua Epstein, the US implementation of this highly flexible tool models 350 million individuals (a virtual US) as they move among all zip codes of the United States on a daily basis. This permits detailed tracking of epidemic dynamics in time and space, and the exploration of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical public health policy interventions for a wide range of contagious diseases.

This US implementation of the model represents a truly unique tool for applied public policy research as it allows for the design and testing of optimal policies in the event of an infectious disease outbreak such as Pandemic Influenza. For example, in the coming year, CSED will populate the model with every hospital and ER (literally every staffed bed) in the country to study the ability of the nation to handle catastrophic events.

The LSAM was developed under the DHS University Center of Excellence on Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response (PACER) at The Johns Hopkins University.

The LSAM model was recently featured in an article on Nextgov.com on March 20, 2008 and an article in DHS S&T Snapshots, March 2008.