Bruce Edmonds

Network for Computational Modeling for SocioEcological Science (CoMSES Net)

2012-01-04T11:51:00.004Z

The Network for Computational Modeling for SocioEcological Science (CoMSES Net) is based on the OpenABM.org site but extended to a network with wider scope and aims. CoMSES has just been announced along with an invitation for people to register and apply for full membership. Their aims are close to my heart...

COMSES Net will serve as a self-organized community of practice and a conduit to expedite knowledge exchange for computational modeling in SES. It will seek to grow scientific infrastructure so as to better serve research that uses computational modeling by:

establishing an interactive, online library for computational models (including for review of models associated with publications) and associated standard data testbeds for model evaluation;
promoting a common standard for model description;
developing educational curricula for embedding modeling and computational thinking in the normal practice of social and natural science.
collaborating with journals and other scientific publishing venues to promote the exchange of knowledge about modeling concepts and methods for SES, establish protocols for peer review of computational models, and ensure that scientists creating computational models for SES research receive intellectual credit for their work.

For more details see:
http://www.openabm.org/page/comses-net

Slides from my Bath IOP talk on "Complexity and Context-Dependency", 19th Dec 2011

2011-12-19T15:03:00.002Z

This version of the talk goes more into ways of looking for context in social science data.

http://www.slideshare.net/BruceEdmonds/complexity-and-contextdependency-version-for-bath-iop-seminar

Kick-off meeting of the "Crime and Corruption Exploratory", Rome 25-27th Jan 2012

2011-12-15T12:18:00.000Z

Kick-off meeting

‘Crime and Corruption Exploratory’

Rome, January 25 to 27, 2012

During the meeting we will discuss the issues related with the startup of FuturICT Crime and Corruption Exploratory, including (i) contents, (ii) governance, (iii) logistic, (iv) info networks, (v) resources.

Docs about crimEx
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0By-nT9oBy-oTMWE0NDNkZjctZmRhZS00ZmU4LTkwYzktNWU5NTlhNTY0ZWM5
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0By-nT9oBy-oTN2E1ZjQ4NmQtNzcyMi00NzNlLWJhNDAtNTBmYzAwY2IzZ

Draft Scheduling

on the 25, start at 14:30, until around 18:30

Introduction to themes: around CCE

CCE and Network

on the 26, 10:30-16:30
Working Groups

Governance

Resources

Logistic

In the afternoon: plenary session

on the 27, 10:30-18:30

What to do now: working groups on strategic choices and funding

In the afternoon: plenary session

Registration. (If you have not already done, but you're interested in participating , please register: the policy with which it handles reservations is first-in first-out …)

On the web site http://futurictcrimeexploratory.wordpress.com/

you will find a page called Registration form, that allows you to automatically register to the event. Registration is free. After the confirmation of the registration you'll receive the information on the logistic of the event.

An amazing and funny chart of all the money in the world...

2011-11-25T12:01:00.001Z

...see http://xkcd.com/980/huge

(I dont usually re-blog things but this is exceptional)

A one-day inter-disciplinary seminar on "Complexity of Complexity", Bath 19th Dec.

2011-11-22T14:14:00.001Z

The Complexity of Complexity

A one-day inter-disciplinary seminar

December 19th 2011, 10.30-3.30 at the University of Bath

Speakers:

Peter Allen, Complex Systems Research Centre, Cranfield

“Evolutionary complexity and the RealWorld”

Bruce Edmonds, Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester MetropolitanUniversity

“Complexity and Context-Dependency”

Chaired by:

Dr Jean Boulton, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University ofBath

Complexity theory has been embraced by a wide range of disciplines -physics, biology, earth sciences and economics, strategy development, urbanplanning and climate modelling to name but a view. It developed, through the20th century, out of early systems thinking, non-equilibrium thermodynamicsand evolutionary theory. But is there one theory or many? What are theassumptions underpinning differing approaches? Are some applications moremetaphorical than scientific? What is the worldview implied by complexity? Iscomplexity necessarily about modelling?

This seminar, sponsored by the Institute of Physics Nonlinear andComplex Physics group, seeks to provide a forum to explore the way complexityis understood by different disciplines and provide the opportunity forcross-disciplinary learning and debate sparked by our two eminent speakers.

The event is free; to book, please email Jean Boulton on j.g.boulton@bath.ac.uk stating the focus of your interest. Places are restricted to 40.

Google Citations

2011-11-17T13:31:00.001Z

Google now has a basic citations page you can build very easily (Google suggests the list of your citations and you edit these to remove the few spurious ones etc.)

Mine is at: http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=uYuZ1VEAAAAJ

I have started a new blog on "Simulating the social processes of science"...

2011-11-02T14:06:00.001Z

... to coincide with publication of the special section of JASSS on the same theme (see blog for details).

The blog is at:
http://simsocsci.blogspot.com/

Special Issue of "Simulation" in Jan 2012 on ABS of Complex Social Systems

2011-10-24T15:49:00.001+01:00

There will be a Special Issue of the Journal Simulation in Jan 2012 on the topic:

Agent-Based Simulation of Complex Social Systems

Edited by

Adolfo López-Paredes
Franziska Klügl
Bruce Edmonds

The Papers will be:

Heppenstall, Implementing Comprehensive Offender Behaviour in a Realistic Agent-Based Model of Burglary
Troitzsch, Simulating Communication and Interpretation as Means of Interaction in Human Social Systems
Son, Simulation-Based Workforce Assignment Considering Position in a Social Network
Giardini, Gossip for Social Control in Natural and Artificial Societies
Zhou, On Fidelity and Model Selection for Discrete Event Simulation
Topcuoglu, A New 3-D Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network Simulation Environment for Connected Coverage Problems
Ma, Evaluation of integrated application of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies using stochastic incident generation and resolution modeling

An interesting paper...

2011-10-21T16:50:00.002+01:00

...see: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

...but do read down to the very end! ;-)

Paper published: Disaggregating quality judgements

2011-10-13T17:49:00.001+01:00

Edmonds, B. (2011) Disaggregatingquality judgements. Mind & Society 10(2):169-180. (http://www.springerlink.com/content/67500t946828u1n2)(Original discussion paper: http://cfpm.org/cpmrep204.html)

Abstract:

The notion of quality is analysed for its functional roots as a social heuristic for reusing others’ quality judgements and hence aiding choice. This is applied to the context of academic publishing, where the costs of publishing have greatly decreased, but the problem of finding the papers one wants has become harder. This paper suggests that instead of relying on generic quality judgements, such as those delivered by journal reviewers, that the maximum amount of judgemental information be preserved and then made available to potential readers to help them find papers that meet their particular needs. The suggestion is that: multidimensional quality data be captured on review of papers, this information is stored on a database, and then used to filter papers according to the criteria set by the searcher—personalising the quality filter. In other words the quality judgements and subsequent use are maintained in a disaggregated form, maintaining the maximum informational context of the judgements for future use. The advantages, disadvantages, challenges and possible variations of this proposal are discussed.

CfP: Workshop on Modelling Policy-making (MPM 2011)

2011-09-19T13:45:00.000+01:00

Vienna, Dec 12 or 13th 2011.

In conjunction with
The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2011)

Submission Focus:
The workshop invites submissions of original research about the application of ICT to the early phases of the policy cycle, namely those before the legislation is fixed by the legislators: agenda setting, policy analysis, and lawmaking. The research should seek to address the gap noted above. The workshop focusses particularly on using and integrating a range of subcomponents – information extraction, processing, representation, modelling, simulation, reasoning, and argument – to provide policy making tools to the public and public administrators.

Deadline: 24th October

http://wyner.info/LanguageLogicLawSoftware/index.php/2011/09/18/workshop-on-modelling-policy-making/

My ECCS 2011 Poster: Using Data Sets to Simulate Evolution within Complex Environments (A0 Poster)

2011-09-15T15:08:00.000+01:00

Poster:
http://www.slideshare.net/BruceEdmonds/using-data-sets-to-simulate-evolution-within-complex-environments-poster

Abstract:

An agent-based model of evolution and adaption is presented with complex genomes, sexual and asexual reproduction. However, unlike other models, this has a purposefully complex environment. Individuals are spread over a 2D space upon which is projected a complex data set derived from observations of the real world. Energy extraction for the purposes of life and reproduction is achieved by the match between the genome and the data in its locality. In this model different genomes develop to exploit different parts of the space, with some genomes acquiring a greater generality than others. This model can be used to explore the trade-offs inherent between diversity, specialization and inter-breeding among individuals.

My talk at CoDyn@ECCS 2011: Modelling Belief Change in a Population Using Explanatory Coherence

2011-09-15T13:25:00.002+01:00

Slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/BruceEdmonds/modelling-belief-change-in-a-population-using-explanatory-coherence

Abstract:
A simulation model is presented that represents belief change, based on Thagard’s theory of explanatory coherence, within a population of agents who are connected by a social network. In this model there are a fixed number of represented beliefs, each of which are either held or not by each agent. These beliefs are to different extents coherent with each other – this is modelled using a coherence function from possible sets of core beliefs to [-1,1]. The social influence is achieved through gaining of a belief from another agent across a social link. Beliefs can be lost by being dropped from an agent’s store. Both of these processes happen with a probability related to the change in coherence that would result in an agent’s belief store. A resulting measured “opinion” can be retrieved in a number of ways, here as a weighted sum of a pattern of the core beliefs – opinion is thus an outcome and not directly processed by agents. Results suggest that a reasonable rate of copy and drop processes and a well connected network are required to achieve consensus, but given that, the approach is effective at producing consensuses for many compatibility functions. However, there are some belief structures where this is difficult.

My talk at Policy Modelling@ECCS 2011: Four different views of a policy model : an analysis and some suggestions

2011-09-15T13:23:00.005+01:00

Slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/BruceEdmonds/four-different-views-of-a-policy-model-an-analysis-and-some-suggestions

Abstract:

A policy model has (at least) four different interpretations: (a) intention: the intention/interpretation of the simulation designer/programmer, (b) validation: the meaning established by the validation of the model in terms of the mapping(s) to sets of evidence, (c) use: the meaning established as a result of the use of a model in a policy making/advice context and (d) interpretation: the narrative interpretation of the policy maker/advisor when justifying decisions made where this refers to a policy model.

These four different interpretations are loosely connected via social processes. The relation between intention and validation is relatively well discussed in the context of “scientific” model specification and development. The relation between use and interpretation has been discussed in a number of specific contexts. However when and how a relationship between the scientific world of intention/validation and the policy world of use/interpretation are established in practice is an area with little active research.

Both personal experience and philosophical considerations suggest that these two worlds are very different in terms of both purpose and method. However this does not mean that there cannot be any well-founded connection between them. The key question is understanding the social processes of how this can happen, what are the conditions that facilitate it happening and what is the nature of the relationship between the four views when it does happen.

Interestingly these issues have been faced and extensively discussed in the field of Artificial Intelligence, which has confronted the distinction between meaning of internal models (loosely, the beliefs of an agent about its environment) in these four ways. The field of AI has not come up with a final solution to these problems, and is itself divided into those that inhabit separate approaches that adopt a subset of these approaches to model meaning. However it is suggestive of some ways forward, namely:

•    a recognition of the problem that there are these different ways of attributing meaning to a policy model (and hence avoid some common errors derived from conflating these four views);
•    symbol grounding in the sense of learning meanings through repeated use and adjustment (either in response to validation or interpretation views or both);
•    and the observation of scientific-policy interaction as it actually occurs (e.g. an ethnographic study of scientist/policy advisor interaction).

Some developments in the area of participatory policy modelling can be seen as forays into this arena, albeit without structured assessment.

My talk at NESS@ECCS 2011: Mundane Rationality as a basis for modelling and understanding behaviour within specific contexts

2011-09-15T13:21:00.001+01:00

Slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/BruceEdmonds/mundane-rationality-as-a-basis-for-modelling-and-understanding-behaviour-within-specific-contexts-9251997

Abstract:
The paper starts out by pointing out the context-dependency of human cognition and behaviour, pointing out that (a) human behaviour can change sharply across contexts but also that (b) behaviour within a given context can sometimes be described in relatively simple terms . It thus argues against a grand theory of rationality that seeks to explain and/or generate human behaviour across of contexts. Rather it suggests an alternative approach whereby "mundane" accounts of rationality are used which are specific to a limited number of contexts. Such an approach has its particular difficulties, but allows the integration of narrative accounts of possible behaviours using a variety of social mechanisms at the micro level with comparisons with aggregate macro data. It is noted that in the resulting simulations that equilibria are simply not relevant within plausible timescales.

My talk at ECCS2011: Using a Data-Integration Model to Stage Abstraction in Voter Turnout

2011-09-15T13:19:00.000+01:00

Slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/BruceEdmonds/using-a-dataintegration-model-to-stage-abstraction-in-voter-turnout

Abstract:

A simulation model is presented that represents belief change, based on Thagard’s theory of explanatory coherence, within a population of agents who are connected by a social network. In this model there are a fixed number of represented beliefs, each of which are either held or not by each agent. These beliefs are to different extents coherent with each other – this is modelled using a coherence function from possible sets of core beliefs to [-1,1]. The social influence is achieved through gaining of a belief from another agent across a social link. Beliefs can be lost by being dropped from an agent’s store. Both of these processes happen with a probability related to the change in coherence that would result in an agent’s belief store. A resulting measured “opinion” can be retrieved in a number of ways, here as a weighted sum of a pattern of the core beliefs – opinion is thus an outcome and not directly processed by agents. Results suggest that a reasonable rate of copy and drop processes and a well connected network are required to achieve consensus, but given that, the approach is effective at producing consensuses for many compatibility functions. However, there are some belief structures where this is difficult.

My talk @ 2011 ESSA Summer School: "The Impossibility of Social Simulation"

2011-08-03T11:51:00.001+01:00

Video is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmAKbI3wqOU

Other information (slides, abstract) posted previously:
http://bruceedmonds.blogspot.com/2011/07/simulation-summer-school-slides.html

Diagrams of Phillips' Fluid Mechanical Model of the economy

2011-07-25T20:43:00.001+01:00

First of the real thing...

...then as a cartoonist in Punch depicted it!

A brief interview of me by David Hales

2011-07-25T12:25:00.003+01:00

At the ESSA summer school in Surrey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPHTFU7Vi0A

To see other interviews, including Paul Omerod, Warrent Thorngate and Edmund Chattoe-Brown go to David's youtube page http://www.youtube.com/user/daphal

A paper on simulation experiment design for social simulation

2011-07-21T10:04:00.001+01:00

Opening the ‘Black Box’ of Simulations: Transparency of Simulation Models and Effective Results Reports Through the Systematic Design of Experiments

Iris Lorscheid
Hamburg University of Technology

Heine Bernd-Oliver
affiliation not provided to SSRN

Matthias Meyer
Technical University Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH)

Abstract:

Many still view simulation models as a black box. This paper argues that perceptions could change if the systematic design of experiments (DOE) for simulation research was fully realized. DOE can increase (1) the transparency of simulation model behavior and (2) the effectiveness of reporting simulation results. Based on DOE principles, we develop a systematic procedure to guide the analysis of simulation models as well as concrete templates for sharing the results. A simulation model investigating the performance of learning algorithms in an economic mechanism design context illustrates our suggestions. Overall, the proposed systematic procedure for applying DOE principles complements current initiatives for a more standardized simulation research process.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1860904

Bruce Edmonds

Simulation Summer School Slides

2011-07-19T14:17:00.000+01:00

I am at the ESSA Summer School at Surrey University. I lasts the whole week.

All the slides (as they are uploaded) will be at:
http://www.simian.ac.uk/courses/essa-summer-school-2011/presentations

My talk (yesterday) was entitled "The Impossibility of Social Simulation" and you will find the slides at the above link.

Abstract:

It is often forgotten how difficult the task of a social simulator is. In this talk I start by discussing some of these difficulties. I move on to discussing some of trade-offs that are inevitable with social simulation, including that between relevance and rigour. These difficulties and trade-offs are related to the various possible purposes for the simulation of social phenomena including those of conceptual clarification, prediction, explanation and mechanism analysis. Those embarking on this complex and difficult task are exhorted not to fudge these issues, but to consider them carefully, make them explicit and accept the consequences of their choices.

A blog post urging the unpicking of the Hetrodox economic "hairball"

2011-07-07T17:45:00.002+01:00

On the Real World Economics Review Blog

entitled: Unpicking the anti-neo-classical “hairball”, so that what we are for is not defined by what we are against

My presentation at FuturICT meeting in Zurich 16th June 2011

2011-06-16T14:11:00.002+01:00

On "Participatory Policy Modelling"

Slides at:
http://bruce.edmonds.name/slides/Participatory%20Policy%20Modelling%20-%20BE.ppt

My talk at "Complexity of Evolutionary Processes Workshop" in Manchester

2011-06-16T14:09:00.005+01:00

Using data sets to simulate evolution within complex environmentsBruce Edmonds
The talk suggests a way to investigate whether environmental complexity affects evolutionary processes. The suggestion is to use complex data sets that derive from the observation/measurement of natural systems. The data set is spread accross a space defined by two of the variables in the data set. The genome of individuals encode a model that tries to predict the outcome variable from the independent variables in the set. Resources in the model are gained by individuals local to a data point predicting the outcome variable better than its competitors. Once the contribution of resources to all individuals is decided, then an evolutionary process takes place, preferentially propogating and mating fitter individuals (so the less fit die). This is illustrated with an evolutionary model using the Cleveland Heart Disease Data Set. Evolution on this is compared to evolution on a data set with similar distributions of values for each variable but chosen independently of each other, so with the noise and shape of the original but without the complexity. Illustrative results showing that the change in environment significantly affects how evolution proceeds is exhibited and discussed. It is suggested that the same approach could be used to test the assumptions (e.g. the adequacy of a simple environment) in many models of evolutions, as well as investingating whe environmental complexity might affect evolution and what kind of complexity.

A talk at the IOP workshop:
http://www.theory.physics.manchester.ac.uk/~galla/ncpmeeting2011/ncpmeeting.html

My slides can be found at:
http://bruce.edmonds.name/slides/Complexity%20of%20evol%20processes%20-%20BE.ppt

CfP: SPECIAL ISSUE ON “SIMULATION AND LAW”

2011-05-26T13:47:00.018+01:00

CfP: SPECIAL ISSUE ON “SIMULATION AND LAW”

Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law
Editors: K.D. Ashley; G. Sartor; A. Oskamp.
ISSN: 0924-8463 (print version) ISSN: 1572-8382 (electronic version)

The Special Issue on “SIMULATION AND LAW” aims to promote
collaboration between the fields of agent-based simulation (ABS) and
the legal domain, bringing together ideas and researchers from both
communities.

The Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law contains information on
theoretical or empirical studies in artificial intelligence, cognitive
psychology, jurisprudence, linguistics, or philosophy that address the
development of formal or computational models of legal knowledge,
reasoning, and decision making. It also includes in-depth studies of
innovative artificial intelligence systems that are being used in the legal
domain as well as gives space to studies that address the ethical and
social implications of the field of artificial intelligence and law.

The target of this Special Issue is to stimulate the interplay of both
disciplines, as well as to prompt a reflection exercise on the prospects
of using agent-based simulation to study socio-legal phenomena, as
well as the potential that such an interaction could have in law- and
policy-making processes.

IMPORTANT DATES/ DEADLINES
Abstract Submission: June 24th, Friday
Acceptance Notification: July 22nd, Friday
Paper Submission: November 4th, Friday
Acceptance Notification/Reviewers Reports: December 30th, Friday
Final Version Due: February 10th Friday

PUBLICATION AND SUBMISSION DETAILS
Submissions should be up to 16 pages maximum (including figures,
tables, bibliography, abstract etc) in the journal’s format (details can be
found in http://www.springer.com/computer/artificial/journal/10506 ).

REVIEW PROCESS
All submissions will go through a peer review process, with at least
two independent PC members reviewing each submission.
Following the first reviewing process, authors will be required to revise
their papers which will undergo a second review process before
publication in the journal.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Giovanni Sartor
European University Institute, Law Department
Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini 9
Tel (office): +39-055-4685-528, Fax: +39-055-4685-200
Tel (secretary): +39-055-4685 275
E-mail: giovanni.sartor@eui.eu
http://www.iue.it/LAW/People/Faculty/CVs/sartor.shtml

Eunate Mayor
European University Institute, Law Department
Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini 9
I-50016 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI), ITALY
Tel (cell): +39-327-735-0409
E-mail: eunate.mayor@eui.eu

An introductory talk: "What is Agent-Based Social Simulation?"

2011-04-12T17:26:00.000+01:00

A talk I gave as part of the Methods@Manchester project.

Available (sound, links and slides) at:
http://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/methods/abss/

2nd CFP AEGS@AAMAS-2011: the uses of Agents for Education, Games and Simulations (long)

2011-01-25T15:17:00.000Z

A call for papers for a workshop I'm involved in...

Second CfP for the AAMAS-2011 workshop on

the uses of Agents for Education, Games and Simulations

at the Taipei International Convention Center (TICC) in Taipei, Taiwan on May 2 or 3 2011

In Conjunction with AAMAS 2011

http://www.windmill-cottage.net/AEGS-11/index.html

Rationale and technical description
===================================

Training for complex situations in human societies such as in education, business transactions, military operations, medical care and crisis management can be provided effectively using serious games and simulations. In these types of games and simulations the role of agents to model and simulate naturally behaving characters becomes more and more important. Especially in situations where the games are not just meant to provide fun, but are used to support the learning process it is important that the games achieve their goal and do not just distract (or entertain) the trainee.

A major aim of this workshop is to discuss how to model rational (or non-rational, but natural) behaving agents who are embedded in a social context with other characters and humans. This is especially important when both characters and humans can be pro-active but also have to react to the behaviour of others in their environment. Thus these characters should have some social conscience of themselves and others and base their decisions for actions on this knowledge. Of course social knowledge may consist of detailed knowledge such as that some person has been your long time friend and thus can be trusted to help you, but also general knowledge such as that society looks bad at people that cheat but adores people that grasp opportunities. Thus we aim to model also different levels of action and interactions. Both the operational ones such as gestures and general way of animating characters, the tactical decisions such as negotiation tactics when trying to get some help and long term strategies such as behaving cooperative towards your boss in order to secure a promotion. One of the interesting questions is how these should be modelled and how they interact? And how do current agent architectures support these models?

In general the technologies used in game engines and multi-agent platforms are not readily compatible due to some inherent differences of concerns. Where game engines focus on real-time aspects and thus propagate efficiency and central control, multi-agent platforms assume autonomy of the agents. And while the multi agent platforms offer communication facilities these can or should not be used when the agents are coupled to a game. So, although increased autonomy and intelligence may offer benefits for a more compelling game play and may even be necessary for serious games, it is not clear whether current multi agent platforms offer the facilities that are needed to accomplish this.

In this workshop we want to bring people together that address the particular challenges of using agent technology for games and simulations in particular for educational contexts.

The workshop will have four main themes:

1. Technical
What techniques are suitable for agents that are incorporated in educational contexts, games and simulations. How to balance intelligence and efficiency? How to couple the agents to the game/simulation and manage this coupling’s information flow? How to deal with the inherent real time nature of the game engine environment? How to couple long and short time interactions?

2. Conceptual
What information is available for the agents' use, either through the educational context, or from the system, through for example, the game or simulation engine? How can reaction to events be balanced with goal directed behaviour? How are ontological differences between information used by agents and information from the domain handled? How do we choose the actions of an agent?   Too high level gives little control; too low level makes the agent inefficient.

3. Design
How do we design interactive systems containing intelligent agents? How do we determine what agents should do and should not do, such that local autonomy and story line are well balanced. How do we design the agents themselves that are embedded in other (possibly diverse) systems (including the behaviour authoring tools and methodologies)?

4. Education
It is also important that we introduce both the design and construction of these collaborative autonomous systems into the computer science curriculum and develop ways of encouraging their effective utilisation across the curriculum. Contributions to the workshop will be welcomed that provide a mixture of relevant theoretical and practical understanding of both the teaching and use of multi-agent systems in educational and entertainment research, together with practical examples of the use of such systems in real application scenarios. These will be written for students, teachers, producers, directors and other professionals who want to improve their understanding of the opportunities offered by the use of multi-agent systems in teaching and entertainment scenarios of all types.

Important Dates
===============

Deadline for receiving papers                       January 30 2011
Notification to authors                             February 27, 2011
Camera ready paper                                  March 7, 2011
Workshop                                             May 2 or 3, 2011

Submission Procedure
====================

The workshop welcomes submissions of original works relevant to the topics described above. This year, the workshop will accept submissions of both full papers (maximum 16 pages, LNCS format) and short papers (maximum 8 pages, LNCS format).

Short papers are encouraged as a mechanism for the timely reporting of interesting but preliminary work, that may not as yet have the level of evaluation or detail that would be expected for a regular paper. The program chairs may, at their discretion, accept papers that were submitted as regular papers as short papers, if the authors have explicitly agreed to this when registering their papers.

All accepted regular papers will receive a slot for oral presentation in the conference. The accepted short papers will serve as the basis for discussions during the workshop. If warranted they may be converted to regular papers for the post-proceedings by incorporating the results of these discussions.

Submissions will be peer reviewed rigorously and evaluated on the basis of adherence, originality, soundness, significance, presentation, understanding of the state of the art, and overall quality of their technical contribution. More details about the review process can be found in the conference page.

The papers should be formatted according to LNCS specification and submitted as PDF files. Instructions and templates can be found at
            http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.
Final Papers must be submitted on A4 in PDF format. Your paper should not include page numbers.

All final manuscripts should be uploaded to easychair no later than

        Sunday 30th January 2011
        ========================

The submission web site is http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=AEGS-11
Submissions violating the formatting guidelines will be excluded from the reviewing process.
At least one author of all accepted papers is expected to attend the Workshop.
All accepted papers will be informally published in the Workshop proceedings, and the organisers intend to organize a LNCS publication of the workshop proceedings.

PC Committee
============
# Elisabeth Andre (DFKI, Germany)
# Juan Carlos Augusto (University of Ulster, UK)
# Paul Shueh-Min Chang, (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan)
# Shu-Heng Chen, (National Cheng-Chi University, Taiwan)
# Bill Clancey (NASA, USA)
# Rosaria Conte (ISTC-CNR, Italy)
# Vincent Corruble (LIP6, France)
# Yves Demazeau (CNRS-LIG, Grenoble)
# Virginia Dignum (Technical University Delft, The Netherlands)
# Alexis Drogoul (LIP6, France)
# Bruce Edmonds (MMU, UK)
# Corinna Elsenbroich (University of Surrey, UK)
# Klaus Fischer (DFKI, Germany)
# Rachel E. Goshorn(Naval Postgraduate School, USA)
# Hiromitsu Hattori (Kyoto University, Japan)
# Annerieke Heuvelink (TNO, The Netherlands)
# Dirk Heylen (Univ of Twente, The Netherlands)
# Koen Hindriks (Delft University, The Netherlands)
# Jane Hsu (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
# Toru Ishida (Kyoto University, Japan)
# Wander Jager (Groningen University, The Netherlands)
# Lewis Johnson (Alelo Inc., USA)
# Gal A. Kaminka (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
# Petros Kefalas (CITY Institute/Sheffield University GR)
# Irving King (Chinese University of Hong Kong, HK)
# Yasuhiko Kitamura (Kwansei Gakuin University)
# Stefan Kopp (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
# Mike van Lent (SOAR technology, USA)
# Michael Lewis (University of Pittsburg, USA)
# MeiYii Lim (Heriot-Watt University, UK)
# Chin-Yew Lin (Microsoft Research Asia, China)
# Shou-De Lin, (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
# Simon Lynch (Univ. of Teeside, UK)
# Eleni Mangina (Phelan, University College Dublin, Ireland)
# Stacy Marsella, (ISI, Univ of Southern California, USA)
# Michael Mateas, (University of California at Santa Cruz, USA)
# Riichiro Mizoguchi (Osaka University, Japan)
# Toni Moreno (Univ. Rovira i Virgili, ES)
# Hector Munoz-Avila (Lehigh university, Bethlehem, USA)
# Emma Norling (MMU, UK)
# Anton Nijholt (UT, The Netherlands)
# Gregory O'Hare (University College Dublin, Ireland)
# Joost van Oijen (VSTEP, The Netherlands)
# Jeff Orkin (MIT, USA)
# Julian Padget (University of Bath, UK)
# Ana Paiva (IST, Portugal)
# Agostino Poggi (Univ degli Studi di Parma, Italy)
# Colin Price (University of Worcester, UK)
# Michal Pechoucek (CTU, Czech rep.)
# David Pynadath (USC, USA)
# Geber Ramalho (UFPE, Brazil)
# Gopal Ramchurn (University of Southampton, UK)
# Debbie Richards(Macquarie University, Australia)
# Avi Rosenfeld (JCT, Israel)
# Ilias Sakellariou (UOM, GR)
# David Sarne (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
# Maarten Sierhuis (NASA, USA)
# Barry Silverman (UPenn, USA)
# Von-Wun Soo (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan)
# Pieter Spronck (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)
# Demosthenes Stamatis (TEIHE, GR)
# Ioanna Stamatopoulou (South-East European Research Centre, Thessaloniki, GR)
# Katia Sycara (CMU, USA)
# Duane Szafron (U of Alberta, Canada)
# Rainer Unland (University of Duisburg-Essen, GER)
# Harko Verhagen (Stockholm University/Royal Institute of Technology, SWE)
# Joost Westra (UU, The Netherlands)
# Uri Wilensky (Northwestern University, USA)
# R. Michael Young (North Carolina State University, USA)

Organizers
==========

1    Dr Martin Beer
    Communications and Computing Research Centre
    ACES
    Sheffield Hallam University
    Email: m.beer@shu.ac.uk

2    Cyril Brom
    Department of Software and Computer Science Education
    Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
    Charles University in Prague
    email: brom@ksvi.mff.cuni.cz

3    Von-Wun Soo,
    Department of Computer Science
    Institute of Information Systems and Applications
    National Tsing Hua University
    email:soo@cs.nthu.edu.tw

4    Frank Dignum
    Department of Information & Computing Sciences
    Utrecht University
    The Netherlands
    e-mail: dignum@cs.uu.nl

Poster on "Data Integration Models" @ ECCS2011

2011-01-13T15:59:00.002Z

Edmonds. B. (2010) Data-Integration Models (poster). Eurpean Conference on Complex Systems 2010 (ECCS), Lisbon, September 2010.

Available at: http://cfpm.org/cpmrep211.html

This one the ECCS2010 Best Poster Award.

31st August I am an invited speaker at MALLOW 2010

2010-07-21T14:00:00.000+01:00

MALLOW is: The Multi-Agent Logics, Languages, and Organisations Federated Workshops (MALLOW 2010)

Details at: http://mallow2010.emse.fr/

Towards a Science of Socially Intelligent ICT- a workshop - 3rd August London

2010-07-21T13:52:00.001+01:00

See http://phoenixweb.open.ac.uk/~jeff_johnson/ASSYST_Perada_WS.html

In the programme I think I am:

Title to be announced
Speaker to be announced

but in reality I will talking on "The Roots of Social Intelligence and their Implications for Socio-Technical Systems"

Ends with a "Champagne Reception"!

Worrying Rumours from EPSRC

2010-07-20T10:50:00.001+01:00

At a meeting of the newly funded "Complexity in the Real World" programme, someone reported from a meeting called by the EPSRC (PIs in charge of major EPSRC grants). At that meeting it was reported that even under a mild set of 10% cuts to the research council's funding then the council has a choice between rescinding some grants and not funding any new ones (due to existing commitments).

Apparently the council:

along with similar councils refusing to submit a plan for 40% cuts as requested by the government
wants to continue funding new projects and hence may rescind existing grants, via the mechanism of asking recipient institutions to decide on 10% cuts on its EPSRC funded projects (with "ringfencing" for certain areas - doctoral centres, complexity projects etc.)

Samos 2010 Summit on ICT for eGovernance and Policy Modelling

2010-07-15T14:08:00.000+01:00

I went to this as a member of the "CROSSROAD Scientfic Committee". It was basically a networking event with workshops to brainstorm ideas for future EU funding in this area. Rather pretentiously they issued a communique at the end!

Details at:
http://samos-summit.blogspot.com/2010/07/samos-2010-summit-declaration.html

Context and Changing Behaviour - a talk at the Workshop on Modelling Behaviour Changes in Large Organisations

2010-06-12T10:51:00.000+01:00

The slides from my talk are at:
http://bruce.edmonds.name/context and changing behaviour.ppt

2 new papers on Context and Science/Simulation

2010-06-05T18:56:00.002+01:00

CPM-10-209
Complexity and Context-Dependency - Bruce Edmonds
CPM-10-210
Context and Social Simulation - Bruce Edmonds

Last Research Assesment Results Analysed - Russell group vs. Non-Russell

2010-05-26T11:58:00.001+01:00

Using figures from the last RAE, one can estimate the number of academics judged to be of each kind: "world-class" (4*), "international" (3*), etc.) in each RAE unit of assessment in each university. Using this we can see that 54% of the highest category are in the Russell group university and 46% of the "international" standard. The rounded figures are as follows.

So roughly half of the top academics are not in Russell group universities. Also it shows that the Russell group entered a lot of academics who were judged to be in the lower categories. Below is a histogram of the number of 4* academics in all universities.

There is a "long tail" of non-Russell universities with some "World Class" academics. Thus, although many of the best academics are concentrated in Russell group univsersites, there are many spread around in a variety of universities.

Votes in UK General Elections 1945-2010

2010-05-25T21:10:00.001+01:00

Out of interest I plotted the raw number of votes cast for Conservative, Liberal/Lib-Dem, and Labour parties in each general election from 1945-2010, using Wikipedia as the source of data.

Its interesting that For most of the time Labour and Liberal(-Dem) are anti correllated - a gain for one is a loss for the other. The Liberals have generally failed to attract conservative votes. The Conservative vote has been fairly constant, except immediately after WWII and after the scandals in the early 1990's after which many of the Conservative voters simply did not vote (or voted for a fringe party).

Raw figures are:

year	Labour	Conservative	Liberal
1945	11,967,746	8,716,211	2,177,938
1950	13,226,176	11,507,061	2,621,487
1951	13,948,385	13,724,418	730,546
1955	12,405,254	13,310,891	722,402
1959	12,216,172	13,750,875	1,640,760
1964	12,205,808	12,002,642	3,099,283
1966	13,096,629	11,418,455	2,327,457
1970	12,208,758	13,145,123	2,117,035
1974	11,645,616	11,872,180	6,059,519
1974.5	11,457,079	10,462,565	5,346,704
1979	11,532,218	13,697,923	4,313,804
1983	8,456,934	13,012,316	7,780,949
1987	10,029,270	13,760,935	7,341,651
1992	11,560,484	14,093,007	5,999,384
1997	13,518,167	9,600,943	5,242,947
2001	10,724,953	8,357,615	4,814,321
2005	9,562,122	8,772,598	5,981,874
2010	8,604,358	10,683,787	6,827,938

2 Science papers on social dilemma's and punishment

2010-05-12T12:32:00.000+01:00

Lab Experiments for the Study of Social-Ecological Systems
Marco A. Janssen,1,* Robert Holahan,2 Allen Lee,1 Elinor Ostrom1,2
Science 30 April 2010:
Vol. 328. no. 5978, pp. 613 - 617
DOI: 10.1126/science.1183532

Governance of social-ecological systems is a major policy problem of the contemporary era. Field studies of fisheries, forests, and pastoral and water resources have identified many variables that influence the outcomes of governance efforts. We introduce an experimental environment that involves spatial and temporal resource dynamics in order to capture these two critical variables identified in field research. Previous behavioral experiments of commons dilemmas have found that people are willing to engage in costly punishment, frequently generating increases in gross benefits, contrary to game-theoretical predictions based on a static pay-off function. Results in our experimental environment find that costly punishment is again used but lacks a gross positive effect on resource harvesting unless combined with communication. These findings illustrate the importance of careful generalization from the laboratory to the world of policy.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/328/5978/613

Coordinated Punishment of Defectors Sustains Cooperation and Can Proliferate When Rare
Robert Boyd,1,2,* Herbert Gintis,2,3,4,* Samuel Bowles2,5,*
Science 30 April 2010:
Vol. 328. no. 5978, pp. 617 - 620
DOI: 10.1126/science.1183665

Governance of social-ecological systems is a major policy problem of the contemporary era. Field studies of fisheries, forests, and pastoral and water resources have identified many variables that influence the outcomes of governance efforts. We introduce an experimental environment that involves spatial and temporal resource dynamics in order to capture these two critical variables identified in field research. Previous behavioral experiments of commons dilemmas have found that people are willing to engage in costly punishment, frequently generating increases in gross benefits, contrary to game-theoretical predictions based on a static pay-off function. Results in our experimental environment find that costly punishment is again used but lacks a gross positive effect on resource harvesting unless combined with communication. These findings illustrate the importance of careful generalization from the laboratory to the world of policy.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/328/5978/617

Russ Bernard's Plenary talk at the UK social networks conference...

2010-04-15T19:13:00.000+01:00

...was a great polemic against those that seek to created a quantitative/qualitative divide in the social sciences, arguing for the naturalness of Mixed Methods. Can be seen as arguing for the relative primacy of Evidence over theoretical frameworks, so fitting well with the methodology of the CPM, which could be summarised as: "You have to have a very VERY good reason to ignore evidence". In descriptive simulation one often combines narrative accounts to inform the programming of the micor level (agents) and check this against quatitative evidence at the macro level.

At the UK Social Networks Conference in Manchester

2010-04-15T12:17:00.000+01:00

Gave a talk centered around a proof concerning computability on a class of systems, showing that there is not possible network measure that will reflect underlying node importance. I suggest that simulation could be used to stage abstraction to a social network.

The Impossibility of a General Intelligence

2010-04-09T17:42:00.000+01:00

I just caught Drew McDermot's talk as part of the AISB 2010 symposium: "Towards a Comprehensive Intelligence Test (TCIT): Reconsidering the Turing Test for the 21st Century Symposium". He contended that Turing never intended this as a general test of intelligence, just a test that would establish that a machine was intelligent in some sense.

More than this I have argued that there is no such thing as a general intelligence -- intelligence is very different from computation. See:

Edmonds, B. (2000). The Constructability of Artificial Intelligence (as defined by the Turing Test). Journal of Logic Language and Information, 9:419-424. (http://cfpm.org/cpmrep53.html)
Edmonds, B. (2008) The Social Embedding of Intelligence: How to Build a Machine that Could Pass the Turing Test. In Epstein, R., Roberts, G. and Beber, G. (Eds.) Parsing the Turing Test. Springer, 211-235. (http://cfpm.org/cpmrep95.html)

My Invited Talk at SNAMAS

2010-04-08T15:17:00.001+01:00

Revealing the weakness of SNA and possibly fixing it, using MAS

Slides at: http://bruce.edmonds.name/talks/be-snamas.ppt

A social network model consists of the representation of the target domain in terms of some system of nodes and arcs, plus how inferences about this are going to be made which can be interpreted back to the target. This is a not an analytic results but a contingent theory that can only be validated against independent empical evidence. The approach consists of several stages: (1) the collection of data about the structure and processes in the target; (2) the representation of this in a social network structure; (3) the inference of properties of the network using measures and other results; (4) the interpretation of these inferences back in terms of the target. Properly considered the theory requires all stages and not simply stage (2) (I will call such a SNAT - a social network analysis theory).

To validate such a SNAT would require studies to see if there is independent evidence that the outcomes in the target system actually do correspond to the inferences from such a process (as interpreted to the target and given the data collection processes) for the range of targets that correspond to the declared scope of the theory. Unfortunately this is rare, and more frequently a SNAT is only weakly validated against the intuitions of the same researcher that constructed the SNAT. Partly this is due to expense of SNA and independent validation studies, but it also seems to be a result of the way SNA is divided between theoreticians and users. The theoreticians looks at measures and other techniques that can be made of a given network system usually without any reference to observed case-studies - stage (3). The users study observed examples and apply the techniques (frequently wrapped in software to make them more accessible) of the theoreticans to dervice conclusions about what their target systems - stages (1), (2) and (4). Nobody checks that the combined SNAT, all four stages put together, actually works, i.e. subject it to an independent validation.

To demonstrate how SNAT are an inherently difficult and empirical approach, two cases in "Artificial Social Network Analysis" are exhibited. That is where a MAS is studied using SNA methods.
In an apparently simple MAS, where almost all information about the nodes, their behaviour, the social network etc. is known beforehand (everything except the initialisation of the environment), it is proved that there is NO measure that will reliably correspond to the asymptotic importances of the nodes. Given that one can not devise a reliable measure in this ideal and very simple case, this indicates that uses of SNA measures etc. that assume a priori that a given measure is a useful indication of a property of the target system is deeply flawed.
In a plausible simulation of a P2P file-sharing system, given information that is analagous to what a researcher of social networks "in the wild" would infer, it is evident that the wrong conclusions might well be made. Given this is a simulation it is possible to to check whether the SNAT holds, and despite appearences is found to be lacking. If this is the case for a plausible simulation, how can we take unvalidated SNA analyses of observed systems seriously?
Thus MAS in the form of simulations can be used to probe weaknesses in SNA approaches, showing doubtful assumptions as well as making clear the empirical and contingent nature of SNAT.

It is suggested that the root problem is the drastic nature of the abstraction step in SNA, from a complex social system to a relatively "thin" mathematical structure - a network. However such abstraction can be staged using MAS simulations. This has the advantage that the chain of reference from model to model is maintained and testable, but at the cost of far more work.

Given at SNAMAS, part of AISB 2010, Leciester, March 29th 2010.

Reading: Krotoski (2009) Social influence in Second Life

2010-04-02T13:02:00.001+01:00

Krotoski, Aleksandra K. (2009). Social influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web. PhD Dissertation. University of Surrey, Department of Psychology, School of Human Sciences.

This thesis examines which social psychological and social network analytic features predict attitude and behaviour change using information gathered about 47,643 related avatars in the virtual community Second Life. Using data collected over three studies from online surveys and data accessed from the application’s computer servers, it describes why the structure of a social system, an individual’s position in a social group, and the structural content of an online relationship have been effective at predicting when influence occurs.

Available at:

http://alekskrotoski.com/post/academic-dissertation---social-influence-in-second-life-social-n

Position paper: Unpacking Public Discussion (for CROSSROAD)

2010-03-31T17:07:00.002+01:00

I submitted this:

Unpacking Public Discussion – developing an open forest of political argument (available as CPM-10-207)

to the "Crossroad" consultation exercise and have been selected to be a member of their expert scientific panel.

Organisational Safety Catches

2010-03-31T12:39:00.001+01:00

As Harold Thimbleby pointed out in his AISB 2010 talk, sensible design includes adding the equivalent of safety catches, so that crucial mistakes are not made. (Interactive systems need safety locks, Harold Thimbleby, In press. 32nd International Conference on Information Technology Interfaces 2010. http://iti.srce.hr)

Surely we should try and do the same with organisations, including low-cost adaptions that can stop them making catastrophic mistakes. These could include:

Making sure mistakes are fed back and not discouraged by punishment
Ensuring that people working together have talked socially

However we will only get a full understanding of these when we can model the organisation as a whole.

The Anti-Anthropomorphic Principle

2010-03-31T11:56:00.001+01:00

This is the principle that if is there is an assumption that the world is organised around us or for us in some way (e.g. that the Earth is at the Centre of the Universe, that we live in a unique period of history, that we are the only sentient beings, etc.) then this is likely to be wrong.

This can be seen as a consequence of our apparent cognitive bias to see ourselves as special and take our assumptions as universal.