LOS Model Description

Brief description:

LOS model is an agent-based model of social and economic interactions in local societies. Currently the model is capable of simulating 98% of Norwegian municipalities (350 municipalities, except the 6 largest by population size).

The model contains a core (baseline model) consisting of four elements that are absolutely essential for modeling a society:

Population (digital "copy" of every citizen in the municipality. These digital agents may not be an exact copy of every single person, but their average age, employment status, family composition etc. exactly match the statistics from Statistics Norway). Citizens belong to the households.
Organizations/firms. Every real firm and organization registered in a given municipality is presented in the model. Register information and other sources provide information on number of employees, financial indicators etc. The firms are supplying goods/services to each other and importing/exporting in/out of the municipality.
Labor Market that connects the synthetic population with organizations/firms.
Real Estate Market, together with digital maps and other GIS information places citizens and organizations on the map.

The baseline model makes it possible to simulate any municipality at the very basic level. In order to solve the practical tasks, the model is constantly growing through extensions, for example:

Detailed Labor Market extension is developed through collaboration with NAV (Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration).
Industry specifications (Detailed simulation of firms across different industries (NACE codes) and interactions between them).

Illustration on how LOS model works:

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