MoSeS: Finding a route to a Promised Land

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MoSeSFinding a route to a Promised Land

• Andy Turner
• http//www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/

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Presentation Outline

• Introduction
• History of my web content
• Web 2.0 impacts on e-Research
• MoSeS Sustainability
• GENESIS
• Developing an e-Infrastructure for Social
  Simulation (e-ISS)
• Recap and the killer app

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Introduction

• This session
• MoSeS
• Micro-blogging and feedback
• Twitter and open micro-blogging

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This session

• 50 minutes
• Go through things at least three times
• First time to introduce
• Last time a brief recap
• Open session
• I encourage your interactive and feedback
• Feedback with (micro)bloggers in the room
• To demonstrate some benefits of it.

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MoSeS

• MoSeS is about Modelling and Simulation (for of
  in) e-Social Science
• More introduction and an attempt to define
  e-Social Science to follow
• This presentation is more about the process of
  developing MoSeS and the use of blogs and wikis
  to capture that and bootstrap its development
• I am not planning to go into detail about the
  demographic modelling or its applied uses unless
  you really want me to
• All the MoSeS code we developed is open source
  and Java and that is the core of our work
• We did use great tools developed by others to do
  this most of this is open source and Java
• Netbeans
• MPJ Express
• We did use a variety of computational resources
• We got more results thanks to NGS

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Micro-blogging and feedback

• Hands up who in the room might micro-blog about
  research3 during this session
• Im using identi.ca _at_andyt
• This is forwarded to Twitter _at_agdturner
• Have a quick look
• Anyone using any other service, please shout out
  what it is
• If anyone does shout this out, someone please
  blog it on one of the above channels

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Twitter and open micro-blogging

• A Twitter user for a bit over 2 days
• Thanks to Twitter and its users and profile
• I now appreciate the benefits of micro-blogging
• But
• But
• But

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Twitter not open enough for my liking

• There is an open alternative to Twitter called
  identi.ca
• A service based on Laconica
• Based on open standards
• Some of you have experience with this and have
  used Twitter for practical reasons
• I urge you to switch back
• Break out before its too late
• My friend Ciaran Gulnieks
• A micro-blogging expert
• Among other things
• Convinced me that Laconica is a good way to go
• http//tinyurl.com/cc2yrgciarang
• Ive been thinking about how to get this into
  iGoogle tomorrow and how I can then get the
  Google Gadget into the NCeSS Sakai Portal

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History of my web content

• In the beginning
• The dark ages and the enlightenment
• Blog and wiki
• Blog blog blog
• Publishing fun and metadata
• Using a VRE

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In the beginning

• Web content evolves over time
• I began with static web content
• Served out by the CCG web server
• I started to contribute project pages to this in
  1997
• Soon after, the School of Geography got its own
  Web Server
• I got a basic web home page on this
• I began to develop it
• Most of what I did was publish static HTML
• Many projects were benefitting from using content
  management systems
• For the lifetime of the project this was good,
  but for how long would the content survive?

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The dark ages and the enlightenment

• Catastrophic end for the CCG Web Server
• We had been crossing our fingers for too long
• No resource to do anything about it
• A major problem for CCG
• Most of the people involved on the projects
  hosted on that had moved on
• Andy Evans and I began to sort out the mess which
  had been accumulating since about 1994.
• Our first focus was our own projects
• Next were the high profile projects we were
  getting harassed about
• We began the task of restoring the history of our
  research group
• It has taken years to get back to where we are
  now
• Has anyone else here experienced something like
  that?
• Did you lose a lot?
• What did you lose most of dynamic or statically
  served content?
• RIP

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• Most of the CCG dynamically generated content was
  gone and were unlikely to ever get it back
• Some applets survived
• Pages served out via Content Managements Systems
  (CMS)
• Backed with old databases
• Fossilised
• Most CCG projects had set up and used a different
  CMS
• State of the art for the time
• It seemed best to start again
• Extreme
• Second time round I was in charge of the web
  content
• Determined to try to keep track of what we were
  doing and clean up and re-input the history as we
  went along.

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Blog and wiki

• I began using wikis and blogs to collaborate in
  about 2005
• The initial use was for reading content
• Soon I was editing wiki content and commenting on
  blogs as anon
• It took me a while to realise that I really
  should get an account or to blog myself if I was
  ever going to keep track of my blog comments
• Similarly I felt the need to start compiling a
  dossier of what wikis I used and what wiki
  changes I made
• The tools were not really helping by recording my
  use and making my contribution clear
• I foresaw a difficulty if I was ask for my
  publications and I was unable to point to any
  evidence that I had contributed to the
  development of a resource.
• I wanted to make a dossier, make it open, make it
  a blog of sorts

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Blog blog blog

• Start of 2006, 6 months after MoSeS began I
  started my own blog, blogging most working days
• It was static HTML and I didnt use any Web 2.0
  tool it was all done via my area on the School of
  Geography web site
• http//www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/
• After a couple of months I produced an RSS feed
  and added a new item once a month.
• In the first couple of months I was mainly
  posting about what I was reading
• Soon I was blogging about much of the work I was
  doing
• Soon I felt compelled to blog every day
• Each monthly item and each daily entry took the
  form of nested lists
• Gradually over time a daily template evolved

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• With practice
• I got better at my style of blogging and it
  became less of a burden
• I began blogging as I was doing things
• My system/workflow involved uploaded files from a
  PC in my office in Leeds to the web server
• I wanted to start blogging in meeting away from
  my office
• Time to consider my options
• At the start blogging was fairly time consuming
  thing and the rewards seemed quite distant, but I
  got enough reward to keep going and I got some
  good encouragement from others.
• I might have stopped without it
• My key user kept me going
• Thank you Paul Townend

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Publishing fun and metadata

• I have became increasingly aware of standards and
  the importance of using them to make things
  interoperable and improve accessibility and
  openness
• In 2005 I started to update all my web pages so
  that they were conforming to the standards that
  had evolved
• Blogging helped to drive this process, but I also
  had a lot of old projects and pages which I might
  not update often
• So I systematically went though them all

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• Revisiting old projects and applications was
  interesting and good revision
• It sort of kept the projects alive
• None of the information content on the pages was
  perfect either so I began an on-going campaign of
  incremental improvement
• I got a lot of instant satisfaction in improving
  these things and a feel good factor about making
  things available
• When I got positive feedback from others or could
  use this work it was a great feeling
• Some of my personal pages started to change quite
  a lot and I thought each page needed some basic
  metadata, a version and a date when it was
  published
• There is a history in the comments a track of
  this metadata in my Web Pages
• I can see when and how often I was updating
  things.
• Occasionally I would keep a version of the page
  in a separate file.
• As well as being useful for me to keep track,
  this was also potentially useful for anyone
  wanting to reference my web content

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Using a VRE

• Promotion of Sakai made me give it a go
• It was also open source and developed in Java and
  was looking to be standards compliant
• It ticked these important boxes
• In the last year or so, since the NCeSS Sakai
  Portal has been available, more and more of my
  blogging is being done via the wiki tool and on
  my personal worksite.
• http//portal.ncess.ac.uk/portal/site/7Ea.g.d.tur
  ner40leeds.ac.uk
• Youre not supposed to access that, but you can
  the wiki
• http//tinyurl.com/c57ws2
• Which links to various resources which are mainly
  files
• For MoSeS I wanted to capture information about
  meetings took place, and I started distilling
  Time for a progress report on MoSeS

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• What links to the CCG and School of Geography Web
  Content Ive developed?
• Who read it?
• Not much chance of identifying other users now
• Unless someone has been working in similar way to
  me
• It is increasingly easy to find those links that
  have persisted over time and maybe one day Ill
  get around to it.

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MoSeS Sustainability

• MoSeS has matured, but how mature is it?
• 8 months ago preparing for the Oxford eResearch
  Conference
• First phase NCeSS/ESRC funding still paying its
  way
• Increasing documentation burdon
• Finally getting somewhere producing results and
  developing collaborations

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GENESIS

• Generative e-Social Science
• Deciding what to do with this
• I aim to capturing the process from the start on
  the NCeSS Sakai Portal
• Trying to encourage the team to adopt this way of
  working
• Leaving a trail to help those trying to
  understand how research is done
• Using a shared WordPress blog to foster
  collaboration and for dissemination and getting
  feedback on the research and research process
• Progress in Agent based modelling of Daily
  Activity

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Developing an e-Infrastructure for Social
Simulation (e-ISS)

• JISC are the saviours of us all
• We are about to start
• We captured some of the process of developing the
  proposal
• We can sustain the NCeSS Sakai Portal
• Long live NCeSS!

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Back to origins again

• SIM-UK
• The next big thing
• Killer app
• Road Safety
• Analysing road accident risk

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Recap and the killer app

• Introduction
• History of my web content
• Web 2.0 impacts on e-Research
• MoSeS Sustainability
• GENESIS
• Developing an e-Infrastructure for Social
  Simulation (e-ISS)
• Recap and the killer app

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Thanks and Acknowledgements

• CCG, University of Leeds
• SIM-UK
• NCeSS
• NGS
• EGEE
• EC/ESRC/JISC
• e-Research community
• Organisers
• You

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Introduction

• Andy Turner
• http//www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner
• Autobiography
• Blog
• http//www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/person
  al/blog/
• MoSeS
• http//www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/projec
  ts/MoSeS/
• Open e-Research
• Research and blog about it in detail
• Distill from the blog

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What is MoSeS?

• Modelling and Simulation for e-Social Science
• http//www.ncess.ac.uk/research/nodes/MoSeS/
• e-Social Science being the application of
  e-Science concepts to social science problem
  domains
• e-Science is enhanced science that uses the
  Internet, software tools and structured
  information for collaborative work
• A first phase research node of NCeSS
• Part of a UK collaborative partnership developing
  e-Social Science
• The key part of its program of work is to
  develop an individually based demographic model
  of the UK for 2001 to 2031
• MoSeS people

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MoSeS Starts for the Promised Land

• Work on MoSeS was divided into 3 strands
• demographic modelling
• applications of demographic models
• user interface and portal development
• 3 applications
• health care planning
• transportation research
• business application.

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My MoSeS Checklist

• Outputs to be made as openly available as
  possible
• Use appropriate standards
• Automate with free and open source software.
• Results to be replicable
• Be open about what we were trying to do and how
• Adopt best practice and learn from others in
  NCeSS and think about what else they wanted.

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Blogging

• What is a blog?
• Why blog?
• The evolution of my blog
• People use my blog
• It has opened up what I do
• The benefits far outweigh the costs

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Philosophy of e-Social Science

• Jankowski 2007, Scott and Venters 2007
• Is e-Social Science open by definition?
• Is e-Social Science more than simply the
  application of e-Science methods to the social
  sciences?

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Reflection on MoSeS

• Never-ending story
• Too early to judge?
• There are many positives
• I have learned a great deal over the last 3 going
  on 4 years and found a community of collaborators
  that I am happy and excited to work with.
• I have developed a lot of structured information
  about me and my research interests.
• I have participated in lots of surveys.

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Acknowledgements and Thanks

• This work was supported by the ESRC under
  RES-149-25-0034.
• Thanks to all involved in eResearch for your
  ongoing collaboration.
• Special thanks to my NCeSS and MoSeS colleagues.
• Thanks to the Oxford eResearch conference
  organisers.
• Thank you for listening!

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MoSeS Rationale

• The idea is to provide planners, policy makers
  and the public with a tool to help them analyse
  the potential impacts and the likely effect of
  planning and policy changes.
• Example Application
• There may be a housing policy to do with joint
  ownership, taxation and planning restriction
  legislation that can be developed to alleviate
  problems to do with lack of affordable housing
  and workers without precipitating a crash in the
  housing market and economy as a whole
• A balanced policy may be easier to develop by
  running a large number of simulations within a
  system like SimCity for real to understand the
  sensitivities involved

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Initial Tasks

• Develop methods to generate individual human
  population data for the UK from 2001 UK human
  population census data
• Develop a Toy Model
• Dynamic agent based microsimulation modelling
  toolkit and apply it to simulate change in the UK
• Develop applications for
• Health
• Business
• Transport

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Challenges

• Grid enabling the data and tools
• Visualisation
• Google Earth
• Computer Games
• Collaboration
• Retaining a problem focus
• Design and Development

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Generic MoSeS Approach

• MoSeS to date has approached Modelling and
  Simulation from a specific angle
• Geographic
• Demographic
• Contemporary
• About the UK
• Targeted towards supporting a developing set of
  applications
• It is not a requirement to make it clear what
  steps can be followed by other Social Scientists
  wanting to Model and Simulate something different
• However, the generic work of MoSeS should be
  relevant and we are working towards this

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MoSeS Vision

• Suppose that computational power and data storage
  were not an issue what would you build?
• SimCity
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity
• For real on a national scale

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MoSeS First Steps

• The development of a national demographic model
• The development of 3 applications
• Health care
• Transport
• Business
• The development of a portal interface to support
  the development and resulting applications by
  providing access to the data, models and
  simulations and presenting information to users
  (application developers) in a secure way

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Households
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Communal Establishments
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HSAR
Aggregate HPControl Characteristics
ISAR
Aggregate CEP Control Characteristics