Eidos of a city: simulating the collapse and resilience of ancient eastern mediterranean urban environments via agent-based modelling
EIDOS (EIDOS of a city: simulating the collapse and resilience of ancient Eastern Mediterranean urban environments via agent-based modelling) is an interdisciplinary project that will expand the research communities’ perception about the mechanisms that contributed to the parallel change and transformations of cities in the network of urban habitats of the Eastern Mediterranean. EIDOS will address important questions concerning the phenomenon of urbanization: why do some cities fold at the first sign of turmoil while others, seemingly similar, thrive; what are the dynamic, emergent and complex interactions between growing and deterritorialised (dying) cities within a meshwork of urban environments, from antiquity to early modern times? What components of an ancient city enabled it to be integrated and incorporated into cities of later periods, sometime spanning to our modern period? By combining historical and archaeological data with recent advances in computational simulation methods, EIDOS will significantly add to our understanding about urban resilience in the past. The training and research offered by EIDOS will position the experienced researcher (ER) as an expert in urban computational modelling with highly interdisciplinary methodologies, enabling her to significantly influence urban archaeology and contribute solid foundations to understanding the resilience of our cities.