hallo

[Claudia Pahl]

Hi - Gruezi!

Swarm has made it even to Switzerland!
We are here a group of natural and social scientists being interested in
complex systems. Working at an environmental research institute our main
emphasis is an applying models to improve our understanding for ecosystem
complexity. At the same time we investigate processes of socio-cultural
innovation and induced technical change which we perceive as a major
prerequisite for any sustainable development.
Up to now we have designed simulation models ourselves. However, rather
than building many imperfect and incompatible vehicles we feel that a
combined effort to construct versatile and reliable simulation tools is
highly needed. SWARM seems to be a very promising attempt for doing so.
Regarding SWARM we are newcomers. Our main interest in the next two month
is a pilote study is to test suitability, potential, transparency and
reliability of SWARM. This can be most easily done by implementing models
similar to the ones which already exist and by repeating simulation
experiments. These models will be on one hand a model of an ecological
network operating with discrete time steps on multiple temporal scales. On
the other hand it will be a model describing the dynamics of technological
innovations. We are very interested in the mutual relationship between the
micro- and macro-level of a system. In this respect we intend to contribute
tools which have been developed here as well as make suggestions of what we
find useful to be included in future versions of SWARM. Anyone interested
in more details should feel free to inquire.

If our interest has not faded away during this first test phase since we
may be stuck in a swamp of problems with SWARM....   then I intend as next
step to extend the ecosystem model to spatial dimensions on a multiscale
spatial grid.  There are still a number of other ideas and options for
further modelling projects with SWARM which may take a more distinct shape
once we have collected some experience and have become aware of options and
obstacles. We are definitely very interested in collaborating with the
developers of SWARM in an early phase since we feel that the close
interaction between users and developers is essential for designing a
really useful and versatile tool.

We appreciate hints and advice from those having more experience with SWARM
than we do. On the other hand we will not be reluctant to share our
problems with you - but hopefully as well our progress!

All the best

Claudia and the whole complexity gang here at EAWAG


____________________________________________________________________________
PD Dr. Claudia Pahl-Wostl                           e-mail: address@hidden
EAWAG, Switzerland                                  phone:    +41-1-823-5542
Environmental Physics                               fax:      +41-1-823-5210