We recognize that alcohol abuse leads to acute outcomes for both society and individuals. Among these, we identify DWI crashes with fatalities, assault and battery, suicide, murder, sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse. Alcohol abusers are embedded in a social network that involves the user, family and friends, producers and distributors of alcohol products, law enforcement, the judiciary, remediation, education, and intervention facilities such as Alcohol Safety Action Programs, and detox and treatment facilities, which are, of course, coupled to insurance and managed-care programs. This complex network is reminiscent of more traditional biologic ecology systems, hence the name. The basic idea is to formulate a model of this network with the goal of exploring short- and long-term interventions that reduce the overall probability of acute outcomes. The unique feature of this proposed work is that we are attempting to explore the simultaneous reduction of all acute outcomes. Historically, modeling attempts have focused on specific acute outcomes. The framework we are pursuing is a dynamic agent-based simulation. ? ? ?
