Digital Library of the European Council for Modelling and Simulation

Title:	From Text To Agents – Process Of Developing Evidence-Based Simulation Models
Authors:	Ulf Lotzmann, Martin Neumann, Michael Moehring
Published in:	(2015).ECMS 2015 Proceedings edited by: Valeri M. Mladenov, Grisha Spasov, Petia Georgieva, Galidiya Petrova, European Council for Modeling and Simulation. doi:10.7148/2015 ISBN: 978-0-9932440-0-1 29^th European Conference on Modelling and Simulation, Albena (Varna), Bulgaria, May 26^th – 29^th, 2015
Citation format:	Ulf Lotzmann, Martin Neumann, Michael Moehring (2015). From Text To Agents – Process Of Developing Evidence-Based Simulation Models, ECMS 2015 Proceedings edited by: Valeri M. Mladenov, Petia Georgieva, Grisha Spasov, Galidiya Petrova  European Council for Modeling and Simulation. doi:10.7148/2015-0071
DOI:	http://dx.doi.org/10.7148/2015-0071
Abstract:	Evidence-driven modelling approaches have gained attention in the computational social science community over the past couple of years. A number of research projects have dealt with this topic, and some of the results and experiences gathered in participating in two recent projects are presented in this paper. The main assertion of the paper is motivated by the finding that in order to be reproducibly successful with creating agent-based models from textual evidence, the development process needs to involve conceptual modelling in a well-structured way. This becomes more important if stakeholders should be taken along the modelling, and if due to the amount and kind of evidence to be regarded, appropriate analysis techniques have to be used. This paper aims to give some guidelines on how such an approach could be designed, which has been successfully applied in the realisation of a model about the collapse of a criminal network - from the initial preparation of raw texts, through text analysis, conceptual and formal modelling, right up to the final presentation of simulation results.
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