Session:

Multi-Agent Systems
Tuesday, March 02, 2004, 17.55 – 18.15

Session Chair:

Jorge Marx-Gomez

Paper Title:

Modelling Malaria with Multi-Agent Systems

Author(s):

F. Rateb, University of Granada, Spain
Prof. B. Pavard, GRIC-IRIT, Toulouse, France
Dr. J.J. Merelo Guervos, University of Granada, Spain
Dr. N. Bellamine-BenSaoud, University of Tunis, Tunisia
Dr. M. I.Garcia Arenas, University of Granada, Spain

Abstract:

Malaria is a vector-borne disease that greatly affects social and economic development. We adopt the complex system paradigm in our analysis of the problem. Our aim is to assess the impact of education on malaria healthcare. Multi-agent systems are employed to model the spread of malaria in Haiti, where we introduce malaria education as a possible way of regulating deaths due to the parasite. We launch three experiments, each with environment modifications: 3 hospitals; 3 hospitals and 20 schools; and 5 hospitals and 20 schools. The results of running 10 simulations for each experiment show that there is a reduction in malaria deaths not only when including schools, but when in combination with increasing the number of hospitals.

KEYWORDS
Multi-agent systems, Education, Health care, Malaria, Decentralised system.