3MIP — Mobility and Migration Modeling Intercomparison Project

Team

3MIP is led by three co-leads, advised by a 14-member committee, supported by four domain experts, and coordinated by project management at Cornell.

Leadership

Portrait of Andrew Reid Bell.

Andrew Reid Bell

Schleifer Family Professor of Sustainability, Department of Global Development, Cornell University

Co-lead

Bell works on agent-based modeling of climate adaptation, migration, and food systems. He developed the MIDAS (Migration, Intensification, and Diversification as Adaptive Strategies) agent-based framework, formalized in Bell, Calvo-Hernandez & Oppenheimer (2019), and led the Bell et al. (2021) analysis projecting continued migration toward Bangladesh’s coast through 2100. Before joining Cornell in July 2024, he was Associate Professor at NYU.

Selected publications

  • Bell, A. R., et al. (2021). Migration towards Bangladesh coastlines projected to increase with sea-level rise through 2100. Environmental Research Letters, 16(2), 024045. doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abdc5b
  • Bell, A. R., Calvo-Hernandez, C., & Oppenheimer, M. (2019). Migration, Intensification, and Diversification as Adaptive Strategies. Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling, 1, 16102. doi.org/10.18174/sesmo.2019a16102

Institutional page Personal site

Portrait of Kelsea Best.

Kelsea Best

Assistant Professor, Department of Civil, Environmental & Geodetic Engineering and Knowlton School (City & Regional Planning), The Ohio State University

Co-lead

Best works on climate migration modeling, environmental migration in coastal Bangladesh, and agent-based simulation. Her PhD (Earth and Environmental Sciences, Vanderbilt University, 2022) developed agent-based models of coastal Bangladesh migration — the same substantive ground as 3MIP’s first benchmark case. She is co-author of Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate (Cambridge University Press, 2025) with Ober and McLeman, and joined Ohio State in 2023 with a joint appointment between engineering and city and regional planning.

Selected publications

  • Best, K., Ober, K., & McLeman, R. (2025). Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate. Cambridge University Press.

Institutional page Personal site

Portrait of Lars Tierolf.

Lars Tierolf

PhD researcher, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Co-lead

Tierolf works on coupled coastal adaptation and migration agent-based modeling within COASTMOVE, the ERC Advanced Grant project led by Jeroen Aerts at VU Amsterdam. His 2024 Science of the Total Environment paper presents a coupled agent-based model for France simulating household adaptation and migration decisions under future coastal flood risk — an architecture directly relevant to the Bangladesh benchmark case.

Selected publications

  • Tierolf, L., de Moel, H., van Vuuren, D. P., Botzen, W. J. W., Hoogvliet, M., & Aerts, J. C. J. H. (2024). A coupled agent-based model for France for simulating adaptation and migration decisions under future coastal flood risk. Science of the Total Environment, 917, 170239. doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170239

Institutional page

Project management

Advisory committee

  • Jeroen Aerts, Professor, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  • Thomas Bearpark, Princeton University

  • Michał Burzyński, Senior researcher, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)

  • Nic Choquette-Levy, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Penn State University

  • Fabien Cottier, University of Geneva

  • Alex de Sherbinin, Director, Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia Climate School, Columbia University

  • Roman Hoffmann, Research Scholar, Population and Just Societies Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

  • Maxine Leis, Uppsala University

  • Woi Sok Oh, University of Waterloo

  • Michael Oppenheimer, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

  • Michael Puma, Director, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University; NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

  • Seynabou Sall, Initiative Prospective Agricole et Rurale (IPAR), Senegal

  • Lisa Thalheimer, Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

  • Loring Thomas, Princeton University

Domain experts

Researchers with domain expertise on Bangladesh and climate-related mobility who support the network.

  • Khandaker Jafor Ahmed , University of Michigan

    Climate-migration research on environmental stressors in low- and middle-income countries; BEMS dataset.

  • Hedda Bonatz , PhD researcher, Coastal Risk and Sea Level Rise group, University of Kiel

    Spatial patterns of population development and flood-induced mobility.

  • Ramesh Poluru , The INCLEN Trust International

    Demography and epidemiology; large-scale socioeconomic and behavioral studies.

  • Muhammad Abdur Rahaman , Director, Center for People & Environ (CPE), Bangladesh

    Disaster risk reduction and Nature-based Solutions.

Participating modelers

A public directory of participating modeling teams will appear here after teams register and provide their consent to public listing. If you are a registered participant and wish to be listed, contact project management.

Planned for a future version, after consent is collected.