Sarah L. Hickmott

Reframing social sustainability reporting : towards an engaged approach

Existing approaches to sustainability assessment are typically characterized as being either “top–down” or “bottom–up.” While top–down approaches are commonly adopted by businesses, bottom–up approaches are more often adopted by civil society organizations and communities. Top–down approaches clearly favor standardization and commensurability between other sustainability assessment efforts, to the potential exclusion of issues that really matter on the ground. Conversely, bottom–up approaches enable sustainability initiatives to speak directly to the concerns and issues of communities, but lack a basis for comparability. While there are clearly contexts in which one approach can be favored over another, it is equally desirable to develop mechanisms that mediate between both. In this paper, we outline a methodology for framing sustainability assessment and developing indicator sets that aim to bridge these two approaches. The methodology incorporates common components of bottom–up assessment: constituency-based engagement processes and opportunity to identify critical issues and indicators. At the same time, it uses the idea of a “knowledge base,” to help with the selection of standardized, top–down indicators. We briefly describe two projects where the aspects of the methodology have been trialed with urban governments and communities, and then present the methodology in full, with an accompanying description of a supporting software system.

Integrating BDI reasoning into agent based modeling and simulation

Agent Based modeling (ABM) platforms such as Repast and its predecessors are popular for developing simulations to understand complex phenomenon and interactions. Such simulations are increasingly used as support tools for policy and planning. This work takes a Belief Desire Intention (BDI) agent platform and embeds it into Repast, to support more powerful modeling of human behavior. We describe the issues faced in integrating the two paradigms, and how we addressed these issues to leverage the relevant advantages of the two approaches for real world applications.

User understanding of cognitive processes in simulation: a tool for exploring and modifying

Agent based simulations often model humans and increasingly it is necessary to do this at an appropriate level of complexity. It has been suggested that the Belief Desire Intention (BDI) paradigm is suitable for modeling the cognitive processes of agents representing (some of) the humans in an agent based modeling simulation. This approach models agents as having goals, and reacting to events, with high level plans, or plan types, that are gradually refined as situations unfold. This is an intuitive approach for modeling human cognitive processes. However, it is important that users can understand, verify and even contribute to the model being used. We describe a tool that can be used to explore, understand and modify, the BDI model of an agents cognitive processes within a simulation. The tool is interactive and allows users to explore options available (and not available) at a particular agent decision point.

An agent-oriented approach to holistic sustainability reporting

This paper presents a software application for sustainability reporting where a multi-agent system is an integral part of the overall architecture. We describe the social science philosophy and approach on which the application is based, and the ways in which an agent-based system is able to support these. In particular, we explore how the pro-active, goal oriented, context sensitive nature of the agent system is able to realise the principles of the underlying philosophy, which are to encourage holistic monitoring of sustainability and balance user relevance with standardisation. Further to the functional benefits, the paper looks at why agent oriented design is also valuable as a communication tool in the multi-disciplinary team, enabling the non-computer science members to be actively engaged in system design.