An Agent-Based Model of Elephant Crop Raid Dynamics in the Periyar-Agasthyamalai Complex, India

Human-wildlife conflict poses significant challenges to conservation efforts around the world and requires innovative solutions for effective management. We developed an agent-based model to simulate complex interactions between humans and Asian elephants (particularly solitary bull elephants) in the Periyar-Agasthyamalai complex of the Western Ghats in Kerala, India. Incorporating factors such as crop habituation, thermoregulation needs, and aggression models, this framework enables the evaluation of various experimental scenarios to quantify elephant behaviors and the resulting conflict situations. The ODD protocol, the various cognition models and environmental factors are provided in detail. We simulate different scenarios of food availability to analyze the behavior of elephant agents and assess the influence of environmental factors on space use and emergent conflict patterns. Validation is performed using field data from the region, and elephant movement parameters are tuned using relocation data. Through extensive experimentation, we show that wet months consistently exhibit increased conflict. Furthermore, the experiments reveal that thermoregulation requirements act as a crucial driver of elephant space use, which subsequently influences crop raid patterns. Our findings show how starvation drives wildlife toward crop damage, while crop habituation further exacerbates raid patterns, particularly in regions with limited forest food resources. This agent-based model offers valuable information to develop an intelligent decision support system for wildlife management and decision-making. This is the first step towards development of such a tool, specifically, a primary model that can, over time, be enhanced with layers of complexity and subtlety across various dimensions.