Displaying 10 of 101 results for "Alison Heppenstall" clear search
Two themes unite my research: a commitment to methodological creativity and innovation as expressed in my work with computational social sciences, and an interest in the political economy of “globalization,” particularly its implications for the ontological claims of international relations theory.
I have demonstrated how the methods of computational social sciences can model bargaining and social choice problems for which traditional game theory has found only indeterminate and multiple equilibria. My June 2008 article in International Studies Quarterly (“Coordination in Large Numbers,” vol. 52, no. 2) illustrates that, contrary to the expectation of collective action theory, large groups may enjoy informational advantages that allow players with incomplete information to solve difficult three-choice coordination games. I extend this analysis in my 2009 paper at the International Studies Association annual convention, in which I apply ideas from evolutionary game theory to model learning processes among players faced with coordination and commitment problems. Currently I am extending this research to include social network theory as a means of modeling explicitly the patterns of interaction in large-n (i.e. greater than two) player coordination and cooperation games. I argue in my paper at the 2009 American Political Science Association annual convention that computational social science—the synthesis of agent-based modeling, social network analysis and evolutionary game theory—empowers scholars to analyze a broad range of previously indeterminate bargaining problems. I also argue this synthesis gives researchers purchase on two of the central debates in international political economy scholarship. By modeling explicitly processes of preference formation, computational social science moves beyond the rational actor model and endogenizes the processes of learning that constructivists have identified as essential to understanding change in the international system. This focus on the micro foundations of international political economy in turn allows researchers to understand how social structural features emerge and constrain actor choices. Computational social science thus allows IPE to formalize and generalize our understandings of mutual constitution and systemic change, an observation that explains the paradoxical interest of constructivists like Ian Lustick and Matthew Hoffmann in the formal methods of computational social science. Currently I am writing a manuscript that develops these ideas and applies them to several challenges of globalization: developing institutions to manage common pool resources; reforming capital adequacy standards for banks; and understanding cascading failures in global networks.
While computational social science increasingly informs my research, I have also contributed to debates about the epistemological claims of computational social science. My chapter with James N. Rosenau in Complexity in World Politics (ed. by Neil E. Harrison, SUNY Press 2006) argues that agent-based modeling suffers from underdeveloped and hidden epistemological and ontological commitments. On a more light-hearted note, my article in PS: Political Science and Politics (“Clocks, Not Dartboards,” vol. 39, no. 3, July 2006) discusses problems with pseudo-random number generators and illustrates how they can surprise unsuspecting teachers and researchers.
Social network analysis has an especially long tradition in the social science. In recent years, a dramatically increased visibility of SNA, however, is owed to statistical physicists. Among many, Barabasi-Albert model (BA model) has attracted particular attention because of its mathematical properties (i.e., obeying power-law distribution) and its appearance in a diverse range of social phenomena. BA model assumes that nodes with more links (i.e., “popular nodes”) are more likely to be connected when new nodes entered a system. However, significant deviations from BA model have been reported in many social networks. Although numerous variants of BA model are developed, they still share the key assumption that nodes with more links were more likely to be connected. I think this line of research is problematic since it assumes all nodes possess the same preference and overlooks the potential impacts of agent heterogeneity on network formation. When joining a real social network, people are not only driven by instrumental calculation of connecting with the popular, but also motivated by intrinsic affection of joining the like. The impact of this mixed preferential attachment is particularly consequential on formation of social networks. I propose an integrative agent-based model of heterogeneous attachment encompassing both instrumental calculation and intrinsic similarity. Particularly, it emphasizes the way in which agent heterogeneity affects social network formation. This integrative approach can strongly advance our understanding about the formation of various networks.
Prof. Christian E. Vincenot is by nature an interdisciplinary researcher with broad scientific interests. He majored in Computer Science / Embedded Systems (i.e. IoT) at the Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg, France) while working professionally in the field of Computer Networking and Security. He then switched the focus of his work towards Computational Modelling, writing his doctoral dissertation on Hybrid Modelling in Ecology, and was awarded a PhD in Social Informatics by Kyoto University in 2011 under a scholarship by the Japanese Ministry of Research. He subsequently started a parallel line of research in Conservation Biology (esp. human-bat conflicts) under a postdoctoral fellowship of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) (2012-2014). This led him to create the Island Bat Research Group (www.batresearch.net), which he is still coordinating to this date. In 2014, he was appointed as the tenured Assistant Professor of the Biosphere Informatics Laboratory at Kyoto University. He also been occupying editorial roles for the journals PLOS ONE, Frontiers in Environmental Science, and Biology. In 2020, he created Ariana Technologies (www.ariana-tech.com), a start-up operating in the field of Data Science/Simulation and IoT for crisis management.
Prof. Vincenot’s main research interests lie in the theoretical development of Hybrid Mechanistic Simulation approaches based on Individual/Agent-Based Modeling and System Dynamics, and in their applications to a broad range of systems, with particular focus on Ecology.
I am an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Hamedan University of Technology, Hamedan, IRAN. I have completed my Ph.D. in Futures Studies (foresight) as an interdisciplinary field, an intersection of social sciences and engineering. My
background comes from computer science. For my Ph.D., I decided to pursue my education in Futures Studies; the field I thought I could apply engineering principles such as requirements engineering, analytical skills, design, modeling, planning, and, test engineering to shape the
desired futures. In PhD, I started the complex systems research field and agent-based modeling with NetLogo. In addition to several publications of papers, I published a book on complex systems titled “Futures Studies in Complex Systems” which was awarded as the book of the year by the Iranian Foresight Association.
Since May 2021, I started a research collaboration with TISSS Lab at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz as a project coordinator, the German Research Centre for AI, Human-Centered Multimedia, and the Centre for Research in Social Simulation. The project title is “AI for Assessment” and its objective is to understand the status quo and the future options of AI-based social assessment in public service provisions to help in the creation of improved AI technology for social welfare systems.
On the executive side, I have also various experiences, including head of the department, deputy of the Technology Incubator Center, director of university’s research affairs, and head of the International Scientific Cooperation Office.
Complex Systems, Social Modeling and Simulation
Engineering the Futures
I studied Mathematics at Oxford (1979-1983) then did youth work in inner city areas for the Educational Charity. After teaching in Grenada in the West Indies we came back to the UK, where the first job I could get was in a 6th form college (ages 16-18). They sent me to do post16 PCGE, which was so boring that I also started a part-time PhD. The PhD was started in 1992 and was on the meaning and definition of the idea of “complexity”, which I had been pondering for a few years. Given the growth of the field of complexity from that time, I had great fun reading almost anything in the library but I did finally finish it in 1999. Fortunately I got a job at the Centre for Policy Modelling (CfPM) in 1994 with its founder and direction, Scott Moss. We were doing agent-based social simulation then, but did not know it was called this and did not meet other such simulators for a few years. With Scott Moss we built the CfPM into one of the leading research centres in agent-based social simulation in the world. I became director of the CfPM just before Scott retired, and later became Professor of Social Simulation in 2013. For more about me see http://bruce.edmonds.name or http://cfpm.org.
All aspects of social simulation including: techniques, tools, applications, philosophy, methodology and interesting examples. Understanding complex social systems. Context-dependency and how it affects interaction and cognition. Complexity and how this impacts upon simulation modelling. Social aspects of cognition - or to put it another way - the social embedding of intelligence. Simulating how science works. Integrating qualitative evidence better into ABMs. And everything else.
I am Professor in Computational Resilience Economics at the University of Twente (the Netherlands), which I joined in 2010. In September 2017 I also joined University of Technology Sydney (Australia) as Professor of Computational Economic Modeling working with spatial simulation models to study socioeconomic impacts of disasters and emergence of resilience across scales. I was honored to be elected as a Member of the De Jonge Akademie of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (DJA/ KNAW in 2016) and of Social Sciences Council (SWR/KNAW in 2017). From 2009 to 2015 I have been working part-time as an economist at Deltares – the leading Dutch knowledge institute in the field of water management – specializing in economics of climate change, with focus on floods and droughts management.
I am interested in the feedbacks between policies and aggregated outcomes of individual decisions in the context of spatial and environmental policy-making. The issue of social interactions and information diffusion through networks to affect economic behavior is highly relevant here. My research line focuses on exploring how behavioral changes at micro level may lead to critical transitions (tipping points/regime shifts) on macro level in complex adaptive human-environment systems in application to climate change economics. I use agent-based modelling (ABM) combined with social science methods of behavioral data collection on individual decisions and social networks. This research line has been distinguished by the NWO VENI and ERC Starting grants and the Early Career Excellence award of the International Environmental Modeling Society (iEMSs). In 2018 I was invited to serve as the Associate Editor of the Environmental Modelling & Software journal, where I have been a regular Member of the Editorial Board since 2013.
After completing my undergraduate education at Bilkent University (Turkey), I continued my studies at the University of Cambridge, receiving first my MPhil and then my PhD in Assyriology/Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology, funded by a Chevening Open Society Scholarship and the Board of Higher Education of Turkey. After teaching for several years at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, I moved to eastern Turkey to start the Archaeology Department of Bitlis Eren University, and I was the Head of Department until the end of 2018. I have been a visiting researcher at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman in 2011 (Mellink Fellowship), at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in 2014 (Fulbright Fellowship), and at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History of Uppsala University in 2019 (Swedish Institute Fellowship). I have also held a Newton Advanced Fellowship here at Leicester in the UK. I have previously co-directed several fieldwork projects: the Cambridge University Kilise Tepe Excavations (southern Turkey, 2009-13), the Cide Archaeological Project (survey, Black Sea coast, 2010-1), the Sirwan Regional Project (survey, northern Iraq, 2012-5), and the Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey Project (survey, southern Turkey, 2013-7). I am currently co-directing the Çadır Höyük excavations, which is a joint American, British, Canadian and Turkish archaeological excavation project conducted in north-central Turkey, and the Taşeli-Karaman Archeological Project, which was initiated in 2018 as a continuation of the Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey Project, to study the Göksu River Basin in its wider geographical context in the hope of better understanding its role as a network hub connecting the eastern Mediterranean world to the central Anatolian Plateau.
Ifigeneia Koutiva (female) is a senior environmental engineer, holding a PhD in Civil Engineering (NTUA), a Postgrad Diploma in Water Resources and Environmental Management (Un. of Belgrade - e-learning), an MSc in Environmental Technology (Imperial College London) and an MSc in Mining and Metallurgy Engineering (NTUA). Her PhD was funded by the Greek Ministry of Education through Heracleitous II scholarship. She is currently a postdoctoral scholar of the State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) for 2020 - 2021. She has 10 years of experience in various EU funded research projects, both as a researcher and as a project manager, in the fields of socio-technical simulation, urban water modelling, modelling and assessment of alternative water technologies, artificial intelligence, social quantitative research, KPI and water indicators development and assessment and analysis of large data sets. She is very competent with programming for creating ICT tools for agent based modelling and data analysis tools and she is an experienced user of spatial analysis software and tools. She is also actively involved in the design and implementation of numerous consultation workshops and conferences. She has authored more than 20 scientific journal articles, conferences articles and research reports.
My research interests lay within the interface of social, water and modelling sciences. I have created tools that explore the effects of water demand management policies in domestic urban water demand behaviour and the effects of civil decision making in flood risk management. I am interested in agent based modelling, artificial intelligence techniques, the creation of ABM tools for civil society, Circular Economy, distributed water technologies and overall urban water management.
I am a computational archaeologist with a strong background in humanities and social sciences, specialising in simulating socioecological systems from the past.
My main concern has been to tackle meaningful theoretical questions about human behaviour and social institutions and their role in the biosphere, as documented by history and archaeology. My research focuses specifically on how social behaviour reflects long-term historical processes, especially those concerning food systems in past small-scale societies. Among the aspects investigated are competition for land use between sedentary farmers and mobile herders (Angourakis et al. 2014; 2017), cooperation for food storage (Angourakis et al. 2015), origins of agriculture and domestication of plants (Angourakis et al. 2022), the sustainability of subsistence strategies and resilience to climate change (Angourakis et al. 2020, 2022). He has also been actively involved in advancing data science applications in archaeology, such as multivariate statistics on archaeometric data (Angourakis et al. 2018) and the use of computer vision and machine learning to photographs of human remains (Graham et al. 2020).
As a side, but not less important interest, I had the opportunity to learn about video game development and engage with professionals in Creative Industries. In one collaborative initiative, I was able to combine my know-how in both video games and simulation models (\href{https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92843-8_15}{Szczepanska et al. 2022}).
As of my incorporation into the Department of Computer Architecture and Operating Systems of the UAB as a postgraduate student, it is possible to divide my scientific-technical career into the following stages:
Simulation of Parallel Applications (1992-99): Focused on the design and development of simulators of parallel applications. This research main objective was the definition of abstractions for parallel programs, based on characterizing tasks and their dependences. Two main abstractions were developed, at first a simpler one, which was easier to parametrize, and, next, a more complex an accurate one. Using these characterizations, several simulation tools were programmed and used in the context of national and European projects. As part of my Master’s thesis, I was involved in the design and development of some of these simulation applications.
National projects: 4, European: 2
International conferences: 3, National: 1, Journal papers: 3
Security in Distributed Systems (2007-12): Focused on the design and development of the FPVA (First Principles Vulnerability Assessment) methodology for the evaluation of vulnerabilities in Grid applications. This methodology clearly defined a set of steps for the assessment of Grid applications vulnerabilities, most of these steps could be automatized or at least supported by specific tools. Jointly with other professors of our group and from the University of Wisconsin, I was involved in the original definition and application of this methodology.
International projects: 2
Master Thesis: 1, Ph.D. Thesis: 1
International conferences: 2, National: 1, Journal papers: 2
Parallel Application Modeling (1999-present): This is my main line of research, aimed at defining high-level performance models for parallel applications. Initially, models were defined for MPI applications with a master-worker and pipeline structure, but later this line has been expanded with the definition of models for memory-intensive OpenMP applications, composed (mix of several structures) applications, applications based on mathematical libraries, distributed data-intensive applications and, finally, applications based on the simulation of agents (ABS) with SPMD structure.
As a result of the work on modeling the performance of ABS parallel systems, we have opened a new line for the definition and implementation of a benchmark for assessing the performance of the parallel simulators generated by well-known platforms, such as FLAME, Repast-HPC or D-Mason. In addition, the knowledge we have gained on this topic has opened new ways of collaboration for optimizing real parallel ABS in the health sciences area (tumor growth and infection spread).
National projects: 12, European: 1
International conferences: 17, National: 4, Journal papers: 11
International Presentations: 4
Parallel Applications Tuning Tools (2010-present): Focused on the design and development of tools for automatic tuning and, in some cases, also dynamic tuning of parallel applications. These tools allow the integration of performance models in the form of external components provided by the analyst. For this reason, this research line is tightly coupled with the Parallel Application Modeling one. The two main tools developed totally or partially by our group are Monitoring Analysis and Tuning Environment-MATE (and its highly scalable evolution ELASTIC) and Periscope Tuning Framework-PTF.
National projects: 2, European: 1
International conferences: 11, Journal papers: 2
Tools: MATE, ELASTIC, PTF
International Presentations: 5
Displaying 10 of 101 results for "Alison Heppenstall" clear search