  Consanguinity or inter-cousin marriage is a phenomenon quite prevalent in
certain regions around the globe. Consanguineous parents have a higher risk of
having offspring with congenital disorders. It is difficult to model large
scale consanguineous parental populations because of disparate cultural issues
unique to regions and cultures across the globe. Although consanguinity, as a
social problem has been studied previously, consanguinity from a biological
perspective has yet to be modeled. Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS)
formalism is a powerful modeling formalism for the study of intricate details
of real-world complex systems. In this article, we develop a DEVS model to get
an insight into the role of consanguineous marriages in the evolution of
congenital disorders in a population. As proof-of-concept, we develop a
consanguinity simulation model in Simio simulation software. Our results show
the effectiveness of DEVS in the modeling of consanguinity effects in causing
congenital defects.
