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Please forward this call for papers to any relevant lists or individuals. sorry for crossposting. M-2-M "Model to Model" Workshop Call for Papers dead line for participation - 1st November 2002 In recent years there has been an explosion of published literature utilising Multi-Agent-Based Simulation (MABS) to study social, biological and artificial systems. However, despite the plethora of novel models and interesting results it is rare that models are compared, built-on or transferred between researchers. It would seem there is a dearth of "model-to-model" analysis. The aim of this workshop is to gather researchers in MABS who are interested in understanding and furthering the transferability of knowledge between models and beyond. Although models tend to give very seductive results, it is not always clear how people who are not the modeller can interpret or utilise such results - particularly when building their own models. Understanding complex systems often seems to necessitate the use of more than one model. This might be for several different reasons, for example: different models at varying levels of abstraction might be used for different purposes. By specifically comparing models a better view of what modelling brings to the understanding of (real and artificial) societies may be facilitated. Comparison of models can be achieved by diverse means that have been commonly used by researchers to attain validation or to get a better understanding of others' work, for example: ° Rewriting models that others have described in papers so as to understand them more deeply and reproduce the stated results (Axelrod, 1997); ° Composition of models where different scales are inter-related in a larger model - the results of one model being used in the other; ° Comparison of different models that announce the same type of results and trying to see if they actually produce similar (or the same) results - sometimes termed "aligning" of models (Axtell et al., 1996); ° Comparison of different models based on their fitness to a set of data; ° Using one model as a post-hoc summary or abstraction of another model's results; Constraining the scope of an existing model to enable more powerful techniques to be applied in a different computational framework; ° Using models with different structures and assumptions to confirm each other's results; ° Determining what to do when two models give results that contradict each other. Workshop papers must be based on some comparison of models, as described above. Papers should therefore deal with at least two agent based simulation models (with at least one of them already published). The relationships between the models should be central to the paper and covered in detail. The models should be presented in enough detail to allow for the reader to understand the comparative element. Ideally any new models should be described in sufficient detail for others to be able to reimplement them. Given these criteria papers may be technical or theoretical. Axelrod R., 1997, Advancing the Art of Simulation in the Social Sciences, R. Conte and R. Hegselmann and P. Terna (eds) Simulating Social Phenomena, Springer-Verlag. Selected Papers TBA, Berlin, pp 21-40. Axtell, R., Axelrod R., J.M. Epstein and M.D. Cohen (1996), "Aligning Simulation Models: A Case Study and Results", Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory 1(2), pp. 123-141. Moss S., 2000, Canonical Task Environments for Social Simulation, Computational and Mathematical Organisation Theory, Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2000, pp 249-275. The workshop should be held on 31. march - 1st April 2003 in Marseille, France. Please send your paper(s) before the 1st november 2002 to : [log in to unmask] Organisation committee: Bruce Edmonds (Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester, UK) David Hales (Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester, UK) Juliette Rouchier (GREQAM-CNRS, Marseille, France) Program committee: Rob Axtell Francois Bousquet Helder Coelho Paul Davidsson Marco Janssen Catholijn Jonker Christophe Lepage Scott Moss Mario Paolucci