ABM, Prezi and the New Term

I've not been in the office much over the last month or so, but that's all about to change now that the new academic term has arrived!

Since I last posted, I attended and presented work at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference, one presentation on our managed forest landscape modelling in Michigan and one on the narrative properties of simulation modelling. Both presentations were in the environmental modelling and decision making session, but despite being the graveyard session (last of the conference!) we had some interesting questions and discussion. I tried out Prezi for my narratives presentation (brought to my attention by Tom Smith). It certainly requires a different approach than the linear style PowerPoint enforces. Whether Prezi is a more useful tool probably depends on the message you're trying to communicate - if your story isn't particularly linear then Prezi might be useful.




These last few days I've been up in Edinburgh visiting folks at the Forestry Commission's Northern Research Station to discuss the socio-ecological modelling of potential woodland creation I've been working on recently. I also got to talk with Derek Robinson at the University of Edinburgh about some of these issues. Everyone seemed interested in what I've been doing, particularly with the ideas I've been bouncing around relating to the work Burton and Wilson have been doing on post-productivist farmer self-identities, how these self-identities might change, how they might influence adoption of woodland planting and how we might model that. For example, I think an agent-based simulation approach might be particularly useful for exploring what Burton and Wilson term the '‘temporal discordance’ in the transition towards a post-productivist agricultural regime". And I also think there's potential to tie it in with work like my former CSIS colleague Xiaodong Chen has been doing using agent-based approaches to model the effects of social norms on enrollment in payments for ecosystem services (such as woodland creation).

I was away on holiday for a couple of weeks after the RGS. On returning, I've been preparing for King's Geography tutorials with the incoming first year undergraduates. The small groups we'll be working will allow us to discuss and explore critical thinking and techniques about issues and questions in physical geography. Looking forward a busy autumn term!