This thesis presents an agent-based model of food safety management. The model proposed by McPhee-Knowles, 2015 involving consumers, regulators and stores is extended to evaluate the phenomena of “the wisdom of crowd” towards conditions leading to more efficient and de- pendable system. Through multi-parameter simulation, it is revealed that consumers, regulators and stores effect one another in interesting ways. The model presented by McPhee-Knowles, 2015 is successful in combining various sub-systems which are relevant; such as, inspection system, immune system, effect of consumer avoidance, and stores signaling on their own, and investigated inspectors behavior influence on the food safety. We extend this model to inves- tigate about consumers and store owners, the social dimension. We propose that consumers and owners of the stores accepting existence of “the wisdom of crowd”, can make good de- cision; good for themselves, but at the same time, beneficial for the society as a whole. For example, more vigilance in correction measures by stores (if contaminated) ensures a majority consumers still loyal to the contaminated store. We also replaced stores self-signaling by social networking, acting as a medium to spread the information and helping other consumers finding stores which are not contaminated. As a whole these findings also conform to self-organizing behavior of the population. It is evidenced that an active society has a capability to self-organize even in the absence of any regulatory compulsion. The implications of these findings are enor- mous. System components taking a self-organized corrective corrective action resists against system going towards a highly skewed distribution, thus, improving its stability and robustness. Key words: Food safety, Agent-based modeling, wisdom of crowd. social simulation
This thesis presents an agent-based model of food safety management. The model proposed by McPhee-Knowles, 2015 involving consumers, regulators and stores is extended to evaluate the phenomena of “the wisdom of crowd” towards conditions leading to more efficient and de- pendable system. Through mu...