We were very pleased to have papers for two sessions at the Social Simulation Conference 2017 in Dublin (where we have had mostly good weather so far!). The papers are:

• The Venezuelan System of Potato Production: a simulation model to understand roots of deficiencies — Oswaldo Terán, Christophe Sibertin-Blanc, Ravi Rojas, and Liccia Romero
• Qualitative Data in the Service of Model Building — the Case of Structural Shirking — Patrycja Antosz and Harko Verhagen
• A simulation model for assessing social empowerment: the case of the Southern Rural
  Territory of Sergipe, Brazil — Marcos A. S. d. Silva and Pascal Roggero

Extended abstracts available within: https://sim2017.mira.cx/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2016/12/ESSA@Work-1.zip

• An Empirically Informed Practice-centric Approach to Model Demand Response in Households — Kavin Narasimhan, Nigel Gilbert and Aimie Hope
• WHETHER TO PROTEST. A computational analysis of mobilization for the Arab
  Spring — Stephanie Dornschneider
• Ontological politics in a world of political ontologies — Lia ní Aodha.

Extended abstracts available within: https://sim2017.mira.cx/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2016/12/ESSA@Work-2.zip

Enjoy!

Monday the 25th of September 2017. Duration: 90 minutes, @ Social Simulation Conference 2017, Dublin, Ireland. ESSA SIG Using qualitative data to inform behavioural rules

Scholarships: Two scholarships, each of maximum 500 euro, are awarded to cover transport and accommodation costs in connection with this workshop for young researchers in the field of using qualitative data to inform agent-based models. The two scholarships are awarded on competitive basis. Send your CV, letter or interest, and short description of your research project to Melania Borit (melania.borit@uit.no) by the 31^st of May 2017. The final decision will be taken by mid-June 2017.

Everybody is invited to submit a paper for two special sessions at the 2017 Social Simulation Conference (SSC): SIG Qual2Rule – Using qualitative data to inform behavioral rules and Modelling Social Science Aspects of Fisheries. The conference will take place in the period 25-29 September in Dublin, Ireland and the current deadline for full papers, extended abstracts and posters is set to April 16^th.

Using qualitative data to inform behavioral rules

Session chairs:
Melania Borit, University of Tromsø (UiT) – The Arctic University of Norway, Norway
Bruce Edmonds, Centre for Policy Modelling, MMU, UK

Many academics consider qualitative evidence (e.g. texts gained from transcribing someone talking or observations of people) and quantitative evidence to be incommensurable. However agent-based simulations are a possible vehicle for bridging this gap. Narrative textual evidence often gives clues as to the in-context behavior of individuals and is thus a natural source for behaviors to inform the specification of corresponding agent behavior within simulations. They will not give a complete picture of this, but they will provide some of “menu” of behaviors that people use. During this session we hope to further understanding of how to do this better. It is open to all approaches that seek to move from qualitative evidence towards a simulation in a systematic way. This includes, but is not limited to:

* Approaches based in Grounded Theory.
* Tools for facilitating such a process.
* Participatory processes that result in a simulation.
* Frameworks for aiding the analysis of text into rules.
* Elicitation techniques that would aid the capture of information in an appropriate structure. * Models and ideas from psychology to aid in the above process.
* Insights and tools from Natural Language Processing that may help this process.
* Agent architectures that will facilitate the programming of agents from such analyses.
* Philosophical or Sociological critiques of this project, pointing out assumptions and dangers.
* Examples of where this approach has been tried.

Modelling social science aspects of fisheries

Session chairs:
Melania Borit, University of Tromsø (UiT) – The Arctic University of Norway, Norway
Samaneh Heidari, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Overall, world fisheries are unsustainable, with almost 90% of stocks being over exploited or fully exploited. Improved and innovative management solutions are required if this critical situation is to be remedied. Since management is about people, not fish, integrating social sciences aspects into the modelling of fisheries as a socio-ecological complex system might be such a new way of thinking about fisheries management. We are interested in solutions that look at fisheries as socio-ecological complex systems, with a focus on the social behavior components of the system. Submissions focusing on any aspects of fisheries management are welcome, including (but not restricted to): social norms and self-organization of fishers, applications of Ostrom´s work on managing social commons, compliance with rules under changing management regimes, culture and trust, simulations that combine complex representations of society and complex ecological models, simulations as public educational tools, participatory simulations of fisheries. This session is a SAF21 initiative.

Everybody is invited to submit a paper for two special sessions at the 2016 Social Simulation Conference (SSC): SIG Qual2Rule – Using qualitative data to inform behavioral rules and Modelling Social Science Aspects of Fisheries. The conference will take place in the period 19-23 September in Rome, Italy and the current deadline for full papers, extended abstracts and posters is set to April 4^th.

Using qualitative data to inform behavioral rules

Session chairs:
Melania Borit, University of Tromsø (UiT) – The Arctic University of Norway, Norway
Roman Seidl, Institute for Environmental Decisions, Switzerland

Many academics consider qualitative evidence (e.g. texts gained from transcribing someone talking or observations of people) and quantitative evidence to be incommensurable.  However agent-based simulations are a possible vehicle for bridging this gap.  Narrative textual evidence often gives clues as to the in-context behavior of individuals and is thus a natural source for behaviors to inform the specification of corresponding agent behavior within simulations.  They will not give a complete picture of this, but they will provide some of “menu” of behaviors that people use. During this session we hope to further understanding of how to do this better.  It is open to all approaches that seek to move from qualitative evidence towards a simulation in a systematic way.  This includes, but is not limited to:

*  Approaches based in Grounded Theory.
*  Tools for facilitating such a process.
*  Participatory processes that result in a simulation.
*  Frameworks for aiding the analysis of text into rules.
*  Elicitation techniques that would aid the capture of information in an appropriate structure. *  Models and ideas from psychology to aid in the above process.
*  Insights and tools from Natural Language Processing that may help this process.
*  Agent architectures that will facilitate the programming of agents from such analyses.
*  Philosophical or Sociological critiques of this project, pointing out assumptions and dangers.
*  Examples of where this approach has been tried.

Modelling social science aspects of fisheries

Session chairs:
Melania Borit, University of Tromsø (UiT) – The Arctic University of Norway, Norway
Cezara Pastrav, Matis, Iceland

Overall, world fisheries are unsustainable, with almost 90% of stocks being over exploited or fully exploited. Improved and innovative management solutions are required if this critical situation is to be remedied. Since management is about people, not fish, integrating social sciences aspects into the modelling of fisheries as a socio-ecological complex system might be such a new way of thinking about fisheries management. We are interested in solutions that look at fisheries as socio-ecological complex systems, with a focus on the social behavior components of the system. Submissions focusing on any aspects of fisheries management are welcome, including (but not restricted to): social norms and self-organization of fishers, applications of Ostrom´s work on managing social commons, compliance with rules under changing management regimes, culture and trust, simulations that combine complex representations of society and complex ecological models, simulations as public educational tools, participatory simulations of fisheries. This session is a SAF21 initiative.

The Social Simulation Conference (SSC2015) submission deadline was extended to the 27^th of April!

Everybody is invited to submit a paper for two special sessions at the 2015 Social Simulation Conference (SSC): SIG Qual2Rule – Using qualitative data to inform behavioral rules and Modelling Social Science Aspects of Fisheries. The conference will take place from September 14-18 in Groningen, The Netherlands and the current deadline for full papers, extended abstracts and posters is set to April 13^th.

ESSA Special Interest Group Qual2Rule – Using qualitative data to inform behavioral rules

More details about the SIG can be found here.

Modelling social science aspects of fisheries

Fisheries worldwide are in a bad shape, with almost 90% of the stocks being overexploited or fully exploited. This critical situation requires a new way of thinking about fisheries management. Integrating social sciences aspects into the modelling of fisheries as a socio-ecological complex system might be such a direction. Fisheries management is about managing people and not fish, therefore analyzing social behavior in the fisheries context might result in better management solutions. Submissions focusing on any aspects of fisheries management are welcome, including (but not restricted to): social norms and self organization of fishers, applications of Ostrom’s suggestions for managing social commons, simulations that combine complex representations of society and complex ecological models, simulations as public educational tools, participatory simulations of fisheries

Your contribution to any these two sessions is welcome! When submitting your work on any of these topics in Easychair, you are kindly asked you to select one of these sessions. You can do so by ticking the relevant box at the end of the submission form.

This special issue of JASSS is now published! See http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/ (http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/18/1 for a more permenant but less nicely formatted link).

The introduction to the special issue is:

Using Qualitative Evidence to Inform the Specification of Agent-Based Models by Bruce Edmonds (The introduction to the issue at: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/18/1/18.html)

Contents:

• Grounded Simulation by Martin Neumann
• Structuring Qualitative Data for Agent-Based Modelling by Amineh Ghorbani, Gerard Dijkema and Noortje Schrauwen
• From Participants to Agents: Grounded Simulation as a Mixed-Method Research Design by Ozge Dilaver
• Heads and Hearts: Three Methods for Explicating Judgment and Decision Processes by Warren Thorngate
• Exploring Transitions Towards Sustainable Construction: The Case of Near-Zero Energy Buildings in the Netherlands by Jesús Rosales-Carreón and César García-Díaz
• Identifying Salient Drivers of Livelihood Decision-Making in the Forest Communities of Cameroon: Adding Value to Social Simulation Models by Sukaina Bharwani, Mònica Coll Besa, Richard Taylor, Michael Fischer, Tahia Devisscher and Chrislain Kenfack
• Interactive Simulations with a Stylized Scale Model to Codesign with Villagers an Agent-Based Model of Bushmeat Hunting in the Periphery of Korup National Park (Cameroon) by Christophe Le Page, Kadiri Serge Bobo, Towa Olivier William Kamgaing, Bobo Fernanda Ngahane and Matthias Waltert
• A Context- and Scope-Sensitive Analysis of Narrative Data to Aid the Specification of Agent Behaviour by Bruce Edmonds

The process for this special issue has been a bit slow.  We are now aiming at the January 2015 issue of JASSS for the special issue (mostly derived from the ESSA 2013 papers).

15:00 [603] ESSA, SIG-Qual2Rule: Using QUAL Data, Chair: M. Borit

15:00 [603] Mieczyslaw Metzger and Piotr Skupin: “Human-in-the-loop simulation based system for more effective allocation and training of experimenters’ groups in stimulation of biotechnological processes” #11

15:30 [603] Roman Seidl: “Social Scientists, Qualitative Data, and Agent-Based Modeling” #21

16:00 [603] Syed Muhammad Ali Abbas, Rachel Aldred, Zaid Chalabi and James Woodcock: “Use of an agent-based model to explore urban transitions in commuter cycling” #57

16:30 [603] Annalisa Stefanelli and Roman Seidl: “Moderate and Polarized Opinions. Using Empirical Data for an Agent-Based Simulation” #14

17:30 [603] ESSA, SIG-Qual2Rule: Using QUAL Data

17:30 [603] Jose Antonio Noguera, Antonio Parravano, Paula Hermida and Jordi Tena-Sanchez: “Simulating Social Influence Dynamics From Observational Data: The Case Of Secessionist Flags in Barcelona’s Balconies” #48

18:00 [603] Martin Neumann and Ulf Lotzmann: “From evidence to criminal agents: Modelling the collapse of a criminal network” #71

18:30 [603] Gary Polhill, Nick Gotts, Amparo Alonso-Betanzos, Noelia Sanchez-Maroño, Oscar Fontenla-Romero, Tony Craig and Ricardo Garcia-Mira: “Qualitative spatial representation in agent-based models” #120

The following papers were accepted for presentation during the Social Simulation Conference 2014, Barcelona(in the order they will be presented on Wednesday, 03.04):

• Mieczyslaw Metzger and Piotr Skupin: “Human-in-the-loop simulation based system for more effective allocation and training of experimenters’ groups in stimulation of biotechnological processes”
• Roman Seidl: “Social Scientists, Qualitative Data, and Agent-Based Modeling”
• Syed Muhammad Ali Abbas, Rachel Aldred, Zaid Chalabi and James Woodcock: “Use of an agent-based model to explore urban transitions in commuter cycling”
• Annalisa Stefanelli and Roman Seidl: “Moderate and Polarized Opinions. Using Empirical Data for an Agent-Based Simulation”
• Jose Antonio Noguera, Antonio Parravano, Paula Hermida and Jordi Tena-Sanchez: “Simulating Social Influence Dynamics From Observational Data: The Case Of Secessionist Flags in Barcelona’s Balconies”
• Martin Neumann and Ulf Lotzmann: “From evidence to criminal agents: Modelling the collapse of a criminal network”
• Gary Polhill, Nick Gotts, Amparo Alonso-Betanzos, Noelia Sanchez-Maroño, Oscar Fontenla-Romero, Tony Craig and Ricardo Garcia-Mira: “Qualitative spatial representation in agent-based models”