Krasnow Institute > Monday Seminars > Abstracts

Data Acquisition and Data Employment Protocols for Multiagent Modeling of Conflict

Armando Geller
Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Social Complexity and Research Fellow at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, George Mason University

Computational techniques in general and multiagent modeling in particular have gained increasing popularity as analytic approaches in the social sciences. However, a majority of multiagent models of adversarial social interactions, be it organized crime, irregular warfare, stability and support operations and intrastate conflict, remain empirically underspecified, mostly because available data are rarely collected to meet the requirements of multiagent modeling. Therefore, it is imperative to formulate concepts and methods that address data collection, organization and dissemination challenges unique to multiagent modeling.

During the talk I will outline the current understanding of multi-agent modeling as an empirical methodology and later compare the state-of-the-art in multiagent modeling with ways of employing data within other modeling traditions. Particular emphasis will be given to qualitative data sources, including narratives and case studies in applications to designing cognition of agents and validating their behaviors.

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