Policy Modelling with ABSS: The Case of Water Demand Management

A promising area of application for agent based social simulation is social policy analysis. This promise stems from the ability of ABSS models to describe key processes and relationships in actual societies. However, existing descriptive studies with ABSS have been too abstract convincingly to inform policy analysis. This paper describes the transition from one such study towards a usefully detailed and realistic model currently being developed to inform water demand management in the south of England during a period of climate change.