The Covid 19 pandemic demonstrated that model forecasts based on historical data often overestimate infection numbers. This weakens public acceptance of simulation forecasts as a basis for policy decisions. Traditional models do not account for behavioral changes due to perceived risks and ignore the impact of crisis communication and subjective perceptions.
The goal of SEMSAI is to explore how model-based forecasts can be adjusted to better reflect reality and how communication of forecasts affects future behavior.
The consortium consists of three partners from the fields of psychology and social science disaster research, mathematical modeling and prediction, and agent-based social simulation. The interdisciplinary consortium will investigate these feedback mechanisms and propose how both macro- and micro-scale modeling can benefit from incorporating reflexive mechanisms that reflect situational awareness.