Working groups: Individuals and Environmental Change
Evolution of many environmental phenomena is the result of the collective effects of the actions of many discrete individuals. As yet we have no dynamical theory that allows us to deal directly with the emergent properties of such collective activities, but there is an urgent need to have effective tools for dealing with the coupled problem of physical, ecological and human systems: such tools are required, among other things, for dealing with recurrent environmental hazards and extreme events, coping with longer term issues such as climate change, understanding how to maintain biodiversity in the face of human activity, and ultimately designing sustainable patterns of human settlement and development.
The central aim of this working group is to bring together expertise from different fields so as to develop cross-disciplinary approaches to model construction. The idea is to explore ways of combining models of the physical environment with agent- and individual-based models of human societies and eco-systems, and to investigate the use of e-science techniques for developing and distributing such models.
Discussions could include, but are not limited to, the following areas:
- Performance of large-scale (i.e. millions of individuals) simulations
- Combining techniques from different disciplines e.g. geomorphological and flood hydraulic models, land-use models and behavioural models
- Information and data sharing - creation, unification and curation of datasets
- validation of models using current or historical data
- e-science or other techniques for model coupling,
- communication tools for conveying complex model results across disciplines and to non-experts.
A workshop is planned soon.
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