MoSeS Social Modelling for Planning
The MoSeS project (
http://www.ncess.ac.uk/nodes/moses/) is developing modelling and simulation services to aid social policy development, e.g. procedures for emergency evacuation or deciding the best locations for new screening clinics for a particular disease. For this document, we will call the people using such services
planners and those developing them
developers. A planner will take a set of relevant data regarding population, transport links etc., configure the tools in the way they see fit and perform the modelling to determine the answer to policy-related questions. Examples of configurable services include those to aggregate population data into age groups, estimate travel time between connected locations etc.
Use Case 1
Something has been planned multiple times in the past, sometimes appearing successful, sometimes definitely failing. The planner determines the difference in the data and configuration used between successful and failed cases to detect a pattern.
Use Case 2
The planner uses the services to arrive at a suggested policy. Later, the data changes slightly and the modelling is performed again, leading to a significantly different result. The planner determines where, within the modelling process, the slight change of data led to a major change of result.
Use Case 3
Multiple planners use the software services to develop policies over a period of time. The developers determine which parameters appear unused, whether parameter settings follow those expected etc. and use this to improve the software and guidance for using it.
Use Case 4
A planner attempts to use modelling and simulation services, but the software fails or produces a result which is dubious. The developer determines where the failure occurred or inaccuracy was introduced.
Use Case 5
A planner attempts to uses modelling and simulation services. Later, a developer determines whether multiple services within the process actually produced inconsistent data.
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SimonMiles - 22 Sep 2005
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