TUESDAY May 20

Modelling for Policy is more than Policy Modelling

ESSA@work is open to all interested modelers at any career stage. The only (and key!) requirement is to have a work-in-progress model on which you would like expert and peer feedback. Models can be at any stage of development. Those in the early stages of development (e.g., at the design stage) should still have a clear description of the purpose, scope, structure and logic of the model.

Interested? Submit your material via the ESSA@work application form by 04 May 2025: https://forms.gle/VYce2vuuMNR7Gjjn8.

Any questions? Contact us at essaatworkgroup@gmail.com

Various disciplines follow an incremental approach, meaning that it is common to produce multiple publications on the same model, each time adding a small but substantial contribution. In social simulations, however, while publications do influence each other, this incremental approach is relatively uncommon. Instead, most researchers, after publishing an article, tend to move on to developing an entirely new model.

In this session, we will discuss this topic, exploring questions such as:

• Why are social simulations not typically incremental?
• Is this a problem, or is it simply a characteristic of social simulations?
• How does the non-incremental nature of social simulations affect the comparison of models on the same topic?
• Is it currently feasible to develop research in a more incremental way?
• What changes could encourage the field to adopt a more incremental approach?

All participants will have the opportunity to share their ideas, experiences, and opinions on these topics.

The European Social Simulation Association (ESSA) and Computational Social Simulation Society of the Americas (CSSSA) are separated by time-zones and the Atlantic Ocean, however certain sections of their membership and certainly large parts of their interests have historically overlapped. After a few recent years apart, the management groups of our respective organisations would like to re-kindle our relationship in recognition of the potential strength and progress that might be made by creating closer ties across continents. But what exactly do each of our respective organisations do and what can we learn from one another?
In this facilitated, interactive session, we will be inviting some of the historians of ESSA and CSSSA to talk about our current activities as well as walk through the history and milestones of each organisation, highlighting seminal people, papers, events, and themes that have shaped their existence. We will also call on management committee members and session participants to test their knowledge of the social simulation literature and community through a series of on-line quizzes as a means of finding out a little more about one another.
We will finish the session with a summary of ‘where-to next’ for the relationship between CSSSA and ESSA, highlighting some exciting, planned exchanges of people and information that we hope everyone can look forward to in the coming years.