Experiences with a Socio-Environmental Modeling Course

Abstract

In a social-environmental modeling course, students need to learn complementary skills that include the conceptualisation of a model, different modeling paradigms, computer pro- gramming, and the process of rigorously converting ideas and data into a computational program using a given toolkit. Such topics need to be taught in parallel in order to keep a heterogeneous audience motivated. Based on the experience with multidisciplinary au- diences, this paper describes a socio-environmental modeling course that explores three modeling paradigms: System dynamics, Cellular automata, and Agent-based modeling. We also present a small tutorial with some examples developed for the course.

Keywords

• Modeling paradigms
• Computer simulation
• System dynamics
• Cellular automata
• Agent-based modeling
• TerraME