BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:Asia/Kolkata X-WR-TIMEZONE:Asia/Kolkata BEGIN:VEVENT UID:188@cds.iisc.ac.in DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260330T110000 DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260330T120000 DTSTAMP:20260324T134633Z URL:https://cds.iisc.ac.in/events/phd-thesis-defense-102-cds-seminar-hall- march-30-monday-1100-am-human-wildlife-conflict-modeling-and-mitigation-in tegrating-agent-based-simulations-green-security-games-and-climate-ch/ SUMMARY:PhD Thesis Defense: #102: CDS Seminar Hall: March\, 30 (Monday) @ 1 1:00 AM : "Human-Wildlife Conflict Modeling and Mitigation: Integrating Ag ent-Based Simulations\, Green Security Games\, and Climate Change Analysis " DESCRIPTION:\n\nDEPARTMENT OF COMPUTATIONAL AND DATA SCIENCES\nPh.D. Thesis Defense\n\n\n\nSpeaker : Ms. Anjali. P\nS.R. Number : 06-18-01-10-12-20-1 -18580\nTitle : "Human-Wildlife Conflict Modeling and Mitigation: Integrat ing Agent-Based Simulations\, Green Security Games\, and Climate Change An alysis"\nResearch Supervisors: Dr. Deepak Subramani\nThesis Examiner : Dr. Adway Mitra\, Indian Institute of Technology\, Kharagpur\nDate &\; Tim e : March 30\, 2026 (Monday)\, 11:00 AM\nVenue : # 102 CDS Seminar Hall\n\ nABSTRACT\nHuman-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) represents one of the most pressi ng challenges in biodiversity conservation\, particularly in a changing cl imate\, and requires innovative strategies for effective management. This thesis develops and applies Agent-Based Models (ABMs) to understand comple x socio-ecological systems experiencing HWC\, focusing on two key species: Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in the Periyar-Agasthyamalai complex of the Western Ghats and Saltwater Crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus) in the An daman and Nicobar Islands (ANI). ABMs provide a flexible framework that ca ptures individual differences\, social structures\, and decision-making pr ocesses\, making them particularly well-suited for modeling the heterogene ity inherent in these conflict scenarios. Given the distinct ecological co ntexts and conflict dynamics of these two species\, the thesis is structur ed into two parts\, each addressing unique research objectives tailored to the specific challenges of the Human-Elephant Conflict and the Human-Croc odile Conflict problems. Furthermore\, ABMs are integrated with a novel gr een security game formulation to learn effective mitigation strategies for the Human-Elephant Conflict problem. The impact of climate change on the management strategies of the crocodile population is analyzed to recommend science-based data-driven policy for conservation.\n\nPART - I\nHabitat S uitability Analysis for Asian Elephants in India: The first part of the th esis focuses on Human-Elephant conflict (HEC). We first developed a Random Forest model to estimate the species distribution of Asian elephants in I ndia and examine inter-annual and intra-annual spatiotemporal variability in suitable habitats. Using climatic variables\, topographic conditions\, and satellite-derived metrics (land use/land cover\, net primary productiv ity\, leaf area index\, and normalized difference vegetation index) as pre dictors\, alongside species sighting data from the Global Biodiversity Inf ormation Reserve\, we found that seasonal reductions in suitable habitat m ay explain elephant migration patterns. Alarmingly\, the total available s uitable habitat area has declined\, further exacerbating HEC.\n\nABM of El ephant Crop Raid Dynamics: Building on this foundation\, we developed a sp atially explicit ABM for Seethathode\, Kerala\, India\, where HEC is a rec urring concern. Unlike existing models that only consider food scarcity as a conflict driver\, our ABM incorporates a broader range of factors that influence elephant movement: crop habituation\, risk-taking behavior\, sea sonality\, and thermoregulation requirements. The prototype ABM was develo ped to simulate interactions between humans and solitary bull elephants\, addressing two main challenges: the complex behavior of elephants and insu fficient movement data from the region. Using data from the extensive lite rature survey\, expert insights\, and field surveys\, we created a behavio r model that incorporates crop habituation\, thermoregulation\, and aggres sion. To develop the movement model\, we designed a four-step calibration method to adapt relocation data from radio-tagged elephants in Indonesia t o the model domain. The ABM's structure\, including assumptions\, submodel s\, and data usage\, is detailed following the Overview\, Design concepts\ , Details (ODD) protocol.\n\nEmergent Conflict Dynamics and Crop Raid Patt erns: The ABM simulates various food availability scenarios to study eleph ant behavior and environmental impacts on space use and conflict patterns\ , successfully reproducing observed movement patterns and revealing the em ergence of HEC hotspots within the study area. The simulation results indi cate that wet months increase conflict and that thermoregulation significa ntly influences elephant movements and crop raiding patterns\, with starva tion and crop habituation intensifying these patterns. This prototype ABM represents an initial model for developing a decision support system in wi ldlife management that will be further enhanced with layers of complexity in various dimensions.\n\nWater Availability and Effect on Conflict Dynami cs: We then investigated the spatial dynamics of HEC under different water availability scenarios. The main objective was to examine how artificial water sources (water holes) and natural water sources (rivers and streams) affect the spatial distribution of elephants and crop-raiding incidents w ithin the study area. Numerical experimental results emphasize the role of water availability in the evolution of the elephant trajectories. Our fin dings suggest that crop raiding is not only a foraging behavior but also o ccurs opportunistically as elephants move into human settlements to access water sources. We also studied the spatial scales at which the ABM genera tes biologically plausible trajectories by investigating the elephants' fr equency of visits to water sources. This study offers a valuable framework for understanding the dynamics of HEC and implies that effective conserva tion and conflict mitigation strategies could depend on strategic water ma nagement.\n\nAdaptive Security Game for HEC Mitigation: Finally\, we frame d HEC as a challenging variant of a green security game where elephants st rategically target crops and water sources\, while defenders must allocate scarce patrol resources to protect forest-agricultural boundaries. Unlike typical security game settings\, HEC involves adaptive opponents with unc ertain behavior and significant observability limitations. We adapted the Follow-the-Perturbed Leader with Uniform Exploration (FPL-UE) algorithm fo r HEC mitigation\, making three key contributions to online green security games: (1) reformulating the defender's problem for adversarial settings with partial observability\, where elephant strategies remain largely unkn own\; (2) developing a dynamic mechanism for learning and updating rewards and penalties associated with covered and uncovered boundary patches in r eal-time as elephants adapt to guard deployments\; and (3) validating our approach using the calibrated ABM\, demonstrating convergence properties a gainst multiple adversarial models. This work presents a first-of-its-kind game-theoretic solution verified against realistic opponent adaptation in the human-wildlife conflict domain\, extending security game theory to ec ological adversaries with emergent learning behaviors and opening new rese arch directions in adaptive resource allocation under model uncertainty.\n \nPART-II\nABM of Crocodile Population Dynamics: The second part of the th esis focuses on Human-Crocodile Conflict (HCC). HCC represents a significa nt wildlife management issue in the ANI\, where saltwater crocodiles are r esponsible for more human deaths and injuries than any other crocodilian s pecies. The spatial overlap between human populations and optimal crocodil e habitats creates a concentrated conflict zone requiring urgent managemen t strategies. The ANI provides an ideal habitat for saltwater crocodiles d ue to its unique geographical and ecological characteristics. The growing ANI crocodile population may potentially worsen HCC in the coming years. W e developed a spatially explicit prototype territory dynamics ABM that int egrates territoriality\, dominance hierarchies\, site fidelity\, and tempe rature-dependent sex determination to project the population of C. porosus from 1975 to 2100. The model evaluates demographic trajectories under var ying habitat availability\, nesting site constraints\, and climate scenari os (SSP1-2.6\, SSP5-8.5). The ABM represents demographic processes without extensive parameterization requirements typical of population matrix mode ls\, which is significant given that crocodile population census surveys a re massive undertakings with inherent difficulties in accurately quantifyi ng size classes in wild populations. The ABM also incorporates temperature -dependent sex determination\, where ambient and nest temperatures influen ce hatchling sex ratios\, thereby skewing populations toward females. We i nvestigated how these factors influence population dynamics and their pote ntial contribution to future HCC. The ABM’s structure\, including assump tions\, submodels\, and data usage\, is detailed following the ODD protoco l.\n\nEmergent Demographic Trends and Recruitment Constraints: Simulations reveal that nesting site availability\, not aquatic habitat\, functions a s the primary recruitment bottleneck. Populations with limited nesting sit es (<\;100) stabilize significantly below environmental carrying capacit y\, creating false demographic stability that masks latent growth potentia l. Under extreme warming (SSP5-8.5)\, temperature-dependent sex determinat ion progressively shifts sex ratios toward males by 2100\, simultaneously exacerbating conflict risk while depleting female reproductive reserves. T his study marks a significant methodological leap for crocodilian ecology\ , representing one of the first population models specifically tailored to the unique demographic and environmental constraints of small localized p opulations such as those found in the South Andaman Islands.\n\nCritical H arvest Thresholds and Policy Recommendations: The final component of the t hesis focuses on policy recommendations for managing HCC using our ABM. Hi storically\, successful HCC mitigation strategies have controlled populati on size through adult culling or egg harvesting. Other methods\, such as r emoving and relocating problematic adults\, have proven ineffective as rem oved individuals either return upon re-release or are replaced by other do minant males. Our ABM effectively captures these aspects of territoriality and space use. Harvest simulations identify critical sustainability thres holds: annual removal rates exceeding 15% for adults or 5% for the total p opulation (excluding hatchlings) trigger collapse once subadult reserves d eplete. Notably\, adult removal produces counterintuitive recruitment puls es as subadults rapidly occupy vacated territories\, temporarily masking l ong-term population decline. Comparative analysis with matrix models demon strates that the ABM’s compensatory dynamics emerge mechanistically from observable spatial variables (territory distributions\, nesting sites) ra ther than abstract density-dependence parameters lacking empirical calibra tion. This framework advances ecological informatics by transforming stati c demographic models into spatially explicit decision-support tools\, prov iding the computational foundation for adaptive management strategies bala ncing species conservation with community safety in human-wildlife conflic t zones.\n\n\n\nALL ARE WELCOME CATEGORIES:Events,Thesis Defense END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Asia/Kolkata X-LIC-LOCATION:Asia/Kolkata BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20250330T110000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0530 TZOFFSETTO:+0530 TZNAME:IST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR