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"Traditional policy analysis approaches are characterized by a focus on system modeling and choosing among policy alternatives. While successful in many cases, this approach has been increasingly criticized for being technocratic and ignoring the behavioral and political dimensions of most policy processes. In recent decades, increased awareness of the multi-actor, multiple perspective, and poly-centric character of many policy processes has led to the development of a variety of different perspectives on the styles and roles of policy analysis, and to new analytical tools and approaches - for example, argumentative approaches, participative policy analysis, and negotiation support. As a result, the field has become multi-faceted and somewhat fragmented. Public Policy Analysis: New Developments acknowledges the variety of approaches and provides a synthesis of the traditional and new approaches to policy analysis. It provides an overview and typology of different types of policy analytic activities, characterizing them according to differences in character and leading values, and linking them to a variety of theoretical notions on policymaking. Thereby, it provides assistance to both end users and analysts in choosing an appropriate approach given a specific policy situation. By broadening the traditional approach and methods to include the analysis of actors and actor networks related to the policy issue at hand, it deepens the state of the art in certain areas. While the main focus of the book is on the cognitive dimensions of policy analysis, it also links the policy analysis process to the policymaking process, showing how to identify and involve all relevant stakeholders in the process, and how to create favorable conditions for use of the results of policy analytic efforts by the policy actors."

Forio simulations improve public policy development and implementation by allowing you to: *Model sophisticated behaviors by importing data and formulas from Excel, AnyLogic, and other programs. *Have global access to your Sim via popular web browsers. *Control access with secure user privileges. *Implement updates centrally, ensuring users have the most up-to-date information (preventing old or obselete info from being reused). *Operate worry-free, with dependable security and design measures. Customized simulations apps are easily accessible via standard web browsers, allowing users to easily make adjustments, share and compare results. With Forio's public policy simulations, users can create interactive online tools to generate, manipulate and illustrate "what if" scenarios that are ideal for long-term policy models.With Forio's public policy simulations, users can create interactive online tools to generate, manipulate and illustrate "what if" scenarios that are ideal for long-term policy models.

easy ready made tool to turn system dynamics models into playable games.

PUBLISHED ON: Proceedings of the 22nd International System Dynamics Conference (ISDC) YEAR: 2011ISBN: 978-1-935056-08-9AUTHOR/s: Armenia, Stefano, Yannis Charalabidis, Diego Falsini, Fenareti Lampathaki, David Osimo and Katarzyna SzkutaREFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: Crossroads ProjectLINKS: http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/ DESCRIPTION: The role of Government has evolved over the last thirty years and while its role in service provision has diminished, its regulation activity is growing. The world has become increasingly interconnected, complex, and fast-evolving and the effects of individual behavior and policy choices are not predictable. The paradox is that while the amount of data available to governments has increased exponentially, yet policymakers clearly struggle to make sense of it so that during the last years, the European Commission has decided to invest heavily in research on this issue. In this paper, the authors report about their experience in the CROSSROAD Project, whose main goal was to build a roadmap in order to provide strategic directions for future research in the domain of "ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling". The roadmap, recently approved by European Commission, intends to be the basis for developing a shared vision, inspire collaborative and interdisciplinary research between academia, business, civil society and government, and provide support and orientation to policy-modeling also after the project end. In this context, the paper analyzes the Model-based Governance issue as the part of the roadmap that suggests the development of advanced tools for an efficient and effective decision-making process.

YEAR: 2010 ISSN: 1996-1073 AUTHOR/s: Bassi REFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: Millennium Institute LINKS: http://www.millennium-institute.org/ DESCRIPTION: With the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 national leaders have startedinvestigating options for reducing carbon emissions within national borders. Despiteconfronting similar energy issues, every country that adopted the Kyoto Protocol has aunique energy strategy -being characterized by a different context, social, economicor environmental that influences the way different nations deal with climate change andother energy-related issues. Finding that currently available energy models are often toodetailed or narrowly focused to inform longer-term policy formulation and evaluation holistically, the present study proposes the utilization of an integrated cross-sectoralmedium to longer-term research and modeling approach, incorporating variousmethodologies to minimize exogenous assumptions and endogenously represent the keydrivers of the system analyzed. The framework proposed includes feedback, delays andnon-linearity and focuses on structure, scenarios and policies, requires a profoundcustomization of the model that goes beyond a new parameterization. The inclusion of social and environmental factors, in addition to economic ones, all unique to thegeographical area analyzed, allows for a wider analysis of the implication of policies byidentifying potential side effect or longer-term bottlenecks for socio-economicdevelopment and environmental preservation arising from cross-sectoral relations.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive global survey of the policy process. Written by an outstanding line up of distinguished scholars and practitioners, the Handbook covers all aspects of the policy process including: Theory - from rational choice to the new institutionalism Frameworks - network theory, advocacy coalition and development models Key stages in the process - Formulation, implementation and evaluation Agenda setting and decision making The roles of key actors and institutions This is an invaluable resource for all scholars, graduate students and practitioners in public policy and policy analysis.

PUBLISHED ON: Proceedings of the 22nd International System Dynamics Conference (ISDC) YEAR: 2004 ISBN: 0-9745329-0-8 AUTHOR/s: Armenia, Onori et al.- REFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: Armenia, Onori USED TOOL: POWERSIM DESCRIPTION: The implementation of specific management control/decision support systems, based on System Dynamics models, allow first for a better learning of the environmental dynamics which influence the economic behavior of the firm, and second, for a deep understanding of the results of the decisional policies which the Chemist himself, together with his collaborating staff, may choose among a plethora of strategic choices. By ignoring that "structure influences behavior", all the actions, even the ones deemed most brilliant, may have a very different result if the very nature of the environment is not clear. A system dynamics approach has helped identifying those modeling and conflict resolution policies which may help in conducting a group model building session, towards the sharing of a common mental model and the collegiality of decisions which, in the long run, may bring economic success to the Chemist's business.

MIT course on agent-based modeling for health policy with AnyLogic Nathaniel Osgood - Associate Professor, University of Saskatchewan made a MIT graduate based course on agent-based modeling for health policy with AnyLogic. Please find the original materias here. Material from other supporting lectures and tutorials outside of the scope of this course can be accessed here. This page includes separate tables of materials for both lectures and Java for AnyLogic tutorials; assignments are also available.

Organizations like World Bank and the CDC have discovered how easy it is to design policies, create customized policy models, facilitate decision-making, build stakeholder consensus and share insights with simulations by Forio.

Report on the first Corssover Project workshop: "Report on Using Open Data: policy modeling, citizen empowerment, data journalism" (aka PMOD)

The HYDRA integration architecture is an effort to develop a service-oriented architecture for integrated Web-based access of LANL agent-modeling capabilities. The work here includes both semantic and syntactic interoperability issues, optimization, computing performance, human machine interface design, and multi-scale, multi-model simulation and analysis software integration.

The HCSim model is used to gauge the impact of mass-casualty incidents on hospital capacity.

Climate Interactive is building a community that creates, shares, and uses credible models, accessible simulations, and related media in order to improve the way leaders and citizens around the world think about the climate. Our purpose is to get these sims and insights into the world as accessible products so they can be tweaked, enhanced, translated, distributed and used to power change around the world. We're building sims that are easy to use by climate analysts, communicators, and leaders of many types, and that provide immediate feedback, so users can see the results of different scenarios on atmospheric carbon levels and temperature. And we're sharing our own analysis so that leaders have access to powerful insights. In particular, the "Climate Action Initiative" which includes policy leaders such as Dr. Robert Corell is using our simulations to make change at the highest levels of governments.

EpiSimS is a stochastic, agent-based simulation engine that models the spread of disease in regions, allowing for the assessment of disease prevention, intervention, and response strategies. EpiSimS explicitly represents the daily movements and interactions of synthetic individuals in a city or region, including their interactions with others. It is used as an experimental test bed for analyzing the consequences, feasibility, and effectiveness of response options to disease outbreaks.

How many pedestrians are present in the city? How do the behave over time? Good policy modeling requires accurate data.

PUBLISHED ON: Proceedings of the 26th International System Dynamics Conference (ISDC) YEAR: 2008 ISBN: 978-1-935056-01-0 AUTHOR/s: Armenia, Perugia, Roma REFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: digitPA LINKS: http://www.digitpa.gov.it/ USED TOOL: Powersim DESCRIPTION: This study deals with a System Dynamics analysis of the paper dematerialization problem during the transition to an all-digital society. The efforts are focused on the description of the situation in terms of the relationships between systemic variables that define the underlying structure of the problem. The referring context is the Italian Public Administration. The central spots of the analysis are the diffusion of the "new technology" and the problem of the archives' dimensions, which have been formalized, by means of the creation and the study of a casual loop diagram, into a dynamical hypothesis. The systemic approach that we used through the whole study, allowed us to consider many collateral aspects that are crucial in this issue, and provide a rich analysis that also shows how social and psychological factors may in the end determine policy resistance and great obstacles to organizational change.

Enipedia is an active exploration into the applications of wikis and the semantic web for energy and industry issues. Through this we seek to create a collaborative environment for discussion, while also providing the tools that allow for data from different sources to be connected, queried, and visualized from different perspectives.

Not a game. But recommended because of its originality and eclectic combination.

Blog about agent-based modeling applied to socioeconomic development

For over 100 years, the hospital has been the core of our healthcare system, and a pillar of every community-the central hub where people enter and leave this world, and where scientific discoveries become life saving procedures. But in the last couple decades, technological, social and economic forces have chipped away at this model. As these trends continue-making traditional clinical environments punishingly expensive to run, and increasingly less necessary for many healthcare needs - the future of the community hospital is uncertain. This is the premise of our new Foresight Engine game on the Future of the Hospital-a 24-hour collaborative forecasting game playing from 12pm EST (9am PST) January 8 to 12pm EST (9am PST) on January 9, 2013!