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 16th.
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.