This
past summer I was in the eastern Mediterranean on the island of Cyprus working
fulfilling my GIS duties on the Athienou Archaeological Project,
but also doing field work for my MA thesis which involves using games to
simulate data and examine land use change.
Researchers
have long examined the causes of land use and land cover change through the use
of Cellular Automata (CA), Agent-Based Models (ABM), or Multi-Agent Simulations
(MAS). In particular, MAS are useful because the agents in a
simulation can resemble the actual interactions and decision making processes
of people in stakeholder positions. Most notably, CIRAD researchers
have conducted several participatory modeling projects that incorporate
stakeholders into all stages of model development in order to understand
complex environments in the form of a game (e.g. see Bousquet et al.2007; Castella et al. 2007).
Games
have been used by researchers in many disciplines, but as demonstrated by the
Green Revolution Geo-Game, it is increasingly possible use design games with
GIS to incorporate real-world geographic locations and to play out hypothetical
scenarios. Several conferences are now devoted entirely to games,
including the Games + Learning + Society conference, and
the smaller ThatCamp Games “un-conference”.
Having
individuals play a game to simulate data very similar to using Agent Base
Modeling or Monte Carlo simulations, but in my opinion, more accurate because
the key stakeholders are making decisions and acting, not necessarily based on
rational or logical algorithms, but on how they would react in real life.
My
research focuses on agriculture in Athienou, a village located in the UN Buffer
Zone in Cyprus. As a result of the 1974 Turkish invasion, Athienou lost nearly all of its farmland and the local farmers
were forced to develop new farming strategies. Today, Athienou is
dominated by dairy, chicken, and cereal farms but land ownership issues due to
the invasion remain at hotly contested issue, as seen in recent highprofile court cases.
I
followed the Companion Modeling (ComMod) approach
developed by CIRAD researchers for this case study. This methodology
involves a cyclical progression of field work, modeling, and simulation with
the stakeholders. Accordingly, first, I established the “rules” for
farming in this region though background research and from conducting
interviews with Greek-Cypriot farmers from Athienou. Following examples
from other ComMod research, I developed these rules into a role playing game
(RPG), a tool which also represents the conceptual model of the agricultural
system.
My
research question involved simulating a scenario in which the Turkish Occupied
land to the north of Athienou becomes available for farming again. This
question was used in two ways.
I
had the Greek-Cypriot farmers who helped establish the rules, also play the RPG
to see how they would develop the land. Then I had undergraduate students
play the RPG to see how they would develop the land. This created
two outcomes based on different types of knowledge about the agricultural
system. In this study, I used “expert” and “non-expert” to refer to
specific types of knowledge about a system. Here, the Greek-Cypriot
farmers are the “experts” because they provide the (insider) native perspective
of farming in Athienou. The undergraduate students are “non-experts”
because they bring their own outsider non-native observations and
understandings farming in Athienou.
So,
the purpose of the simulation was to first, determine how the Greek-Cypriot
farmers would indeed develop their land, and second, in surveying the gaming
strategies and results from both the “expert” and “non-expert” outcomes,
examine ways to potentially crowd-source information.
I’ll
be presenting on Sunday the 26th at 10:00am in JenniferMiller’s session ‘Using Spatially Explicit Simulated Data for
Modeling and Geovisualization’.
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