Started: 19 February, 2007
Finished: 22 February, 2007
Primary Contact: Katharina Bauer

Details:

This event/workshop is completed. Soon details of the seminar and workshop will be provided via this page; including the seminar presentations and any further notes.

Associate Professor James Kitts (University of Washington) will present two one-hour seminars followed by a four hour workshop on Modelling and Simulating Social Dynamics.

19th February 2007 - Faculty of Arts, City Campus
The University of Auckland.
22nd February 2007 - School of Government, Pipitea Campus, Victoria University of Wellington.

Seminars (session 1): “Modelling Emergence: Social Simulation” (~2 hour)

Workshop (session 2): “Modelling Social Dynamics: System-Level and Agent-Based Simulation” (~4 hours)

The sessions will begin by discussing a variety of motivations for simulation in the social sciences. Prognostic simulation uses data-driven (“realistic”) models to forecast future trends and events. Methodologists use simulation to generate surrogate datasets for the purpose of validating or calibrating their analytical tools. Planners use simulation to aid in decision-making. Increasingly. Social scientists are using simulation as a virtual laboratory for conducting “computational experiments” to investigate basic theoretical questions. The focus will be on the latter use of simulation as a flexible tool for inventing and refining theory. The objective of this method is to enable the asking of “what if” questions about society in the future, changing certain key parameters and seeing what the consequences could be for key social outcomes. This approach could be enormously beneficial to policy development in NZ as it would enable modelling various policy options or services and then assessing their probable outcomes. Probable outcomes could then be compared to determine the most effective policy option to achieve the desired outcome. Modelling could also be used to demonstrate the key variables associated with the impact of any policy.

Refreshments will be provided, and lunch for the workshop attendees.

For more information please email nzssn@nzssn.org.nz.

There is no charge for this workshop.