Strategic interactions and information exchange on networks : an agent based simulation model of landowner behaviour in conservation incentive schemes (extended abstract)

Starting with data obtained from human-subject experiments to investigate farmers' responses to a conservation incentive scheme, we derive a cognitive model of the farmers' decision-making behaviour, and implement this model within an agent-based simulation of farmers interacting via different types of social network. We find that the outcome of the scheme in early time periods is improved by providing more information to farmers. However, changing the structure of the social network by which the information is provided has no effec

A Survey of formal methods applied to leader election in IEEE 1394

We present a survey of formal specification techniques appiled to the leader election protocol of the IEEE 1394 High Performance Serial Bus. Specifications written in a variety of formalisms are compared with regard to a number of criteria including expressiveness, readability, standardisation, and level of analysis

Gamification within plant health in the Forestry Commission

This note is the outcome of a scoping project commissioned by the Forestry Commission (FC) and carried out by the University of Stirling and the FC. The aim was to raise understanding of "gamification" among staff in the FC and associated bodies, identify possible applications of gamification to tree health issues and suggest possible ways forward in this area. The note incorporates feedback and ideas from a workshop hosted as part of this project in February 2015. The key purpose of this note is to encourage readers to identify possible areas for gamification in the FC and to put forward their ideas for potential games

A Case Study in Integrated Assertion-Based Verification with Omnibus

We present the example of the specification, implementation, and verification of a library system in Omnibus. Three approaches to verification (runtime assertion checking, extended static checking, and full formal verification) are applied to the example, and we compare the ease of use and the error coverage of each approach. We then discuss how the three approaches may be used together within Omnibus in an integrated manner, explain the benefits of this, and show how integration is supported by the Omnibus IDE

Studying the effects of adding spatiality to a process algebra model

We use NetLogo to create simulations of two models of disease transmission originally expressed in WSCCS. This allows us to introduce spatiality into the models and explore the consequences of having different contact structures among the agents. In previous work, mean field equations were derived from the WSCCS models, giving a description of the aggregate behaviour of the overall population of agents. These results turned out to differ from results obtained by another team using cellular automata models, which differ from process algebra by being inherently spatial. By using NetLogo we are able to explore whether spatiality, and resulting differences in the contact structures in the two kinds of models, are the reason for this different results. Our tentative conclusions, based at this point on informal observations of simulation results, are that space does indeed make a big difference. If space is ignored and individuals are allowed to mix randomly, then the simulations yield results that closely match the mean field equations, and consequently also match the associated global transmission terms (explained below). At the opposite extreme, if individuals can only contact their immediate neighbours, the simulation results are very different from the mean field equations (and also do not match the global transmission terms). These results are not surprising, and are consistent with other cellular automata-based approaches. We found that it was easy and convenient to implement and simulate the WSCCS models within NetLogo, and we recommend this approach to anyone wishing to explore the effects of introducing spatiality into a process algebra model

Push-Button Tools for Application Developers, Full Formal Verification for Component Vendors

Software developers have varying abilities and develop software with differing reliability requirements. Sometimes reliability is critical and the developers have the mathematical capabilities to perform interactive theorem proving but this is not usually the case. We believe that most software developers need easy to use tools such as run-time assertion checkers and extended static checkers that can help them produce more reliable application-specific code cheaply. However, these lightweight approaches are not sufficient to allow the safe reuse of software components. To safely reuse software components we need comprehensive descriptions and assurances of correctness. These requirements can be provided for by full formal verification with the additional costs justified by the economies of scale. Our Omnibus verification tool provides integrated support for all these different types of verification. This paper illustrates these concepts through a sorting implementation

IEEE 1394 Tree Identify Protocol: Introduction to the case study

We introduce a comparative case study on the application of formal methods and techniques to the Tree Identify Protocol of the IEEE standard 1394 serial multimedia bus. The Tree Identify Protocol makes an ideal subject for this purpose because it is small yet complex, and may be modelled in a variety of ways. We provide an informal explanation of the protocol, describe how the case study was conducted, and give an overview of the results

Flexible and Configurable Verification Policies with Omnibus

The three main assertion-based verification approaches are: run-time assertion checking(RAC), extended static checking (ESC) and full formal verification (FFV). Each approach offers a different balance between rigour and ease of use, making them appropriate in different situations. Our goal is to explore the use of these approaches together in a flexible way, enabling an application to be broken down into parts with different reliability requirements and different verification approaches used in each part. We explain the benefits of using the approaches together, present a set of guidelines to avoid potential conflicts and give an overview of how the Omnibus IDE provides support for the full range of assertion-based verification approaches within a single tool

An exploratory case study of interactive simulation for teaching Ecology

This paper explores the effectiveness of interactive simulation for teaching a selected complex subject, Ecology, in higher education. Specifically, we carry out a lab intervention using interactive agent based simulation, to teach the complex concept of spatially-explicit predator prey interaction to undergraduate students of an advanced module: BIOU9CE (Community Ecology & Conservation Applications) at the University of Stirling. We propose use of Netlogo, an interactive agent-based simulation tool, and evaluate its effectiveness for learning and teaching of interactive simulation developed specifically for the classroom, compared with an existing, less interactive, simulation tool (R)