PROJECT OUTLINE
The Population Change model is a mathematical representation of the population dynamics of an average city in the United States (Sadava City). It includes many factors that would increase or decrease a population over the time span of one year. Factors that increase the population are birth, good economy, lower cost of living, better healthcare, cheaper food, cheaper land and college. Factors that decrease population are natural death, murder, arson, crime, natural disaster and bad economy. Each of these factors have a different impact on the population because in a real city, a natural disaster and crime would cause different decreases in population. This project contains three different models representing the population change based off of a real city in North Carolina. The three different models we have shown are Vensim, AgentCubes and Excel. Vensim uses arrows and other symbols to represent the factors that impact the change. Agent Cubes is more of a visual representation showing agents moving on a "world" and each agent or shape has a rule or multiple rules which it follows. Excel is a numerical representation with a graph that represents how the population changes as the rates of each factor changes. Out of the three models, Vensim and Excel are the only two models that represent the population change with numbers and rates. On the other hand, AgentCubes is a model that shows a much better visual representation than Vensim and Excel. For our model, the best representation would probably be the Vensim model. It is very easy to follow and has sliders that enable someone to change the rates of each factor depending on real life situations. It also includes a pulse for factors like a natural disaster or a boom in economy that are only present during a period of time.