The Role of Dynamic-Network Multi-Agent Models of Socio-Political Systems in Policy CASOS Technical Report

Researchers and policy makers are increasingly turning to multi-agent and dynamic-network multi-agent models to study real-world systems. The models hold particular appeal because of their intuitive representation of complex real-world systems that can be thought of as “complex systems.” Both policy makers and those affected by the policies influenced by these models often question whether a model is valid. We explore the intended use of these models, the extent to which they can be validated, and the consequent implications for their use in setting policy. We ground the analysis using a dynamic-network multi-agent model we are helping to develop called the Regional Threat Evaluator (RTE), applied to data from Indonesia and Thailand. We find that there are three core difficulties in validating these models: defining the appropriate operating domain, data availability, and validating a model that integrates multiple theories. 1 Acknowledgement: This work was supported in part by the AFOSR under a MURI with GMU (600322) on Adversarial modeling and the National Science Foundation IGERT in Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (NSF DGE-9972762). At the conceptual level, RTE is based, on an earlier model called Acumen, developed under DARPA. Additional support was provided by CASOS – the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University (http://www.ices.cmu.edu/casos). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, the National Science Foundation, DARPA or the U.S. government.