Webinar: Adding real world GIS and census data to agent-based modelling for social scientists

Webinar: Adding real world GIS and census data to agent-based modelling for social scientists

30 January 2020, Online 15.00 - 16.00 GMT

Following on from the webinar on 16 January, this session focuses on how social scientists can incorporate real world data in to their computational social science experiments. In this way, social science researchers can explore whether explanations work in multiple contexts, whether an observed pattern will continue indefinitely or goes through temporal cycles, the consequences of different (and even counter-factual) experimental conditions, or whether some specific features contribute to unique outcomes, among many others.

This free webinar, organised by the UK Data Service, is the second in a series of three on how to use agent-based models and real world data to run computational social science experiments using the example of urban mobility. Specifically, this webinar:

• introduces the important concepts downloading, cleaning and preparing shapefiles and other data files for importing into an existing agent-based model
• presents an extensive exploration of how a commuting model differs when based on random data or imported real world data
• discusses some problems and limitations of using real world data in agent-based models
• presents links so that users can access and use the model data presented in the webinar

The recording of the first webinar will be available to view online by the time this webinar is presented. Webinar three, on 13 February, will be advertised soon after the first webinar has taken place and will provide more information on how to create a suite of experiments to explore experimental conditions.

Here