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Chapter 5
Informal Approaches to Developing Simulation
Models

Emma Norling, Bruce Edmonds, and 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.
There is a danger of this approach: that the modeller will be tempted by
apparently significant results to rush to publication before sufficient consolidation
has occurred. There may be times when the exploratory phase may result in useful
and influential personal knowledge, but such knowledge is not reliable enough to
be up to the more exacting standards expected of publicly presented results. Thus,
it is only in combination with a careful consolidation of models that this informal
approach to building simulations should be undertaken.

Why Read This Chapter?
To get to know some of the issues, techniques and tools involved in building
simulation models using a combination of exploration, checking and consolidation.
To understand when a looser, informal style of development might be beneficial and
when one needs a more structured approach.

E. Norling ( )
School of Computing, Mathematics and Digital Technology, Manchester Metropolitan University,
Manchester, UK
e-mail: norling@acm.org
B. Edmonds • R. Meyer
Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, All Saints Campus, Oxford
Road, Manchester, M1 6BH, UK

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 61
B. Edmonds, R. Meyer (eds.), Simulating Social Complexity,
Understanding Complex Systems, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66948-9_5