Using Qualitative Evidence to inform Behavioural Rules suitable for an agent-based simulation
(Qual2Rule)
This informal workshop occurred at the MMU Business School on the 19th September 2012, organised by Bruce Edmonds from the CfPM).
The following presentations were made:
Cathy Urquhart (Manchester Metropolian University Business School): “Grounded Theory for ABM: A Meeting of Methods?“
Richard Taylor (Stockholm Environment Institute, Oxford Branch): “Modelling Shrimp and Paddy farming in coastal zones” (pdf) (he also went through Neela Matin‘s slides on “Lure and repulsion in a complex delta ecosystem: Glimpses from lives in south-west Bangladesh“)
Bruce Edmonds (Centre for Policy Modelling, MMU): “Towards a Context-Sensitive Structure for Behavioural Rules(Context, Scope, Antecedents, and Results)“
Gary Polhill (Jame Hutton Institute, Aberdeen): “Lessons learned relating qualitative evidence to decision rules in FEARLUS“
Emma Norling (Centre for Policy Modelling, MMU): “Capturing Expert Knowledgefor BDI-Based Behaviour Modelling“
Shah Jamal Alam (University of Edinburgh): “Modelers are from Manchester; Case study teams are from Edinburgh“
Unfortunately Sukaina Bharwani was ill and could not be with us, but she provided us her slides: “Tools for Knowledge Elicitation“.
There was a wide ranging and interesting discussion which I can not begin to summarise, but suggestions as to what to do next included:
That people trial some attempts to use GT with ABM, in particular that different modellers might try working with the same data
A special issue of a journal
A funded workshop/sandpit over a period of time so that people could work together on analysing texts and programming rules
To arrange a broadcast of Sukaina’s presentation
Richard noted that the SEI in Oxford was happy to host people who were interested in furthering this sort of work and has applied for money for two workshops on GT and ABM to occur in South America (if funded).
Other people present included: John Forrester (YCCSA, York), Elizabeth Carabine (Sheffield), Ruth Meyer (CPM, MMU), Helen Bowkett (UWE), Ali Abbas (CPM, MMU), Stefano Picassia (CPM), Mike Bithell (Cambridge), Tony Lawson (Essex), Nick Addis (Leeds), Huw Vasey (Manchester), Alberto Paucar-Caceres (MMUBS), Julian Pratt (WholeSystems), Ellen Saber (Monash) and some others whose names I have lost!
Others who have expressed interest but could not attend include: Edmund Chattoe-Brown, Olivier Barreteau, Nanda Wijermans, Armando Geller, Harko Verhagen, Nick Gotts, Ozge Dilaverkalkan, Neela Matin, Lee-Ann Sutherland, Nigel Gilbert, Pablo Lucas, Clinton Adrews, Julian Pratt, Franziska Klugl, Bill Kennedy, Ruben Verkempynck, Harold Kohn.