Programme
The overall aim of the summer school was to familiarise participants with relevant models of human behaviour from the social sciences and provide guidance in navigating the multitude of theories available. The participants engaged more intensely with a few behavioural models and reached a deeper understanding of social theory and its operationalisation in a modelling context, as well as the ability to formalise more abstract notions in a specific programming language.
The summer school had two main components: 1) lectures and 2) project work. In addition, there was open space in the evening to allow participants to present their own work in speed talks. Lectures introduced participants to different behavioural models and theories and how they have been implemented in natural resource management agent-based models. The participants were also introduced to different stylized agent-based models (e.g. rangeland model, irrigation and fishery models). The participants built on existing stylized models and adapted, expanded and analysed the model to better understand the impact of a particular decision model on the overall outcome of the social-ecological system. The models were written in NetLogo and some analyses of results required the use of R. Therefore, participants had to have some basic programming experience with NetLogo.
2015 Schedule
Morning | Afternoon | Evening | |
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Sunday 5 | Arrival |
Welcome & introductions Maja Schlüter & Marco Janssen: "Exploring alternative behavioural theories in models of social-ecological systems" Wander Jager: "A short manual of human behaviour: an overview of some major behavioural theories" |
Informal get-together |
Monday 6 |
Wander Jager: "On ants and humans: an introduction in social complexity" Introduction to the projects and stylized models Jürgen Groeneveld: NetLogo refresher |
Marco Janssen: "Lessons learned for modelling from behavioural experiments" Project work (including detailed introduction to the models) |
9 speed talks (5 + 5) |
Tuesday 7 |
Ryan McAllister: "Theories of the structure of human interaction: building networks into models of social-ecological problems" Karin Frank: "Analysing the relevance of human decision making in the context of energy transitions" |
Project work | 9 speed talks (5 + 5) |
Wednesday 8 |
Reflections on project work Maja Schlüter: "Linking empirical research on human behaviour and ABM - examples from Bali and the Baltic Sea" Zhanli Sun: "Modelling human decision with Bayesian Networks" Framework Paper discussion |
Project work | Social event (barbecue, camp fire) |
Thursday 9 |
Reflections on project work Nina Schwarz: "The theory of planned behaviour - an implementation regarding environmental innovations" Birgit Müller: "Relevance and challenges of standardized descriptions for human decision models" Jürgen Groeneveld: "Theories for human decision making in agent-based models on land use" |
Project work, preparation of project presentations | Open space |
Friday 10 |
Presentations by the participants (5 + 5 minutes each pair) Wrapping up |
Departure |