Simulation Modeling of Human Population Demography

I offer an educational video that can be used in the school course “Natural Sciences. The Past, Present, and Possible Future of Humanity and the Biosphere” for grade 11, as well as in university courses “Ecology,” “Bioecology,” “Simulation Modeling of Supraorganismal Systems,” and “The Past, Present, and Possible Future of Humanity and the Biosphere: Exhaustion or Flourishing?” . This video describes the creation of simulation models that can be downloaded: DemographicProcesses.ods and DemographicTransition.ods. Understanding how these models are created will make it possible to understand how they work and how to use them. With the help of this video and the models, several tasks can be solved. 1. Understand the logic of constructing such simulation models using spreadsheets. This modeling is considered in more detail in this course. It is best to follow the path described in the video step by step and create your own model in Calc according to its instructions (or even in Excel, although Excel is less suitable for simulation modeling than Calc). I recommend using the video playback speed changes available on YouTube as needed. 2. Use the DemographicProcesses.ods model to construct demographic pyramids of different types. To do this, it is necessary to change demographic parameters (mortality and birth rate) and, if necessary, set a sufficient initial population size. The result of this task may be a screenshot of the main sheet of the model, where the initial parameters and the demographic pyramids constructed with them can be seen. It is interesting to establish which features of social life may cause demographic parameters to take exactly these values. [IMG_1] 3. Set in the DemographicTransition.ods model such values of the initial parameters that make it possible to describe the characteristic features of the four phases of the demographic transition and record the forms of demographic pyramids characteristic of these phases.