Informal Approaches to Developing Simulation Models

Emma Norling, Bruce Edmonds, Ruth Meyer

Abstract: This chapter describes an approach commonly taken by most people in the social sciences when developing simulation models instead of following a formal approach of specification, design and implementation. What often seems to happen in practice is that modellers start off in a phase of exploratory modelling, where they don’t have a precise conception of the model they want but a series of ideas and/or evidence they want to capture. They then may develop the model in different directions, backtracking and changing their ideas as they go. This phase continues until they think they may have a model or results that are worth telling others about. This then is (or at least should be) followed by a consolidation phase where the model is more rigorously tested and checked so that reliable and clear results can be reported. In a sense what happens in this later phase is that the model is made so that it is as if a more formal and planned approach had been taken.