There has been a long standing workshop and track on Qual2Quant where people discuss the use of qualitative data for Social Simulations. In this workshop we want to build on this and look specifically how ethnographic methods can be used to develop social simulations. As ethnographic methods emphasize the description of phenomena from the perspective of the humans that are involved, they provide many handles for modelling agents, processes, mechanisms and rules, as well as environmental contextual information that can be extremely relevant for the simulations of these phenomena. Through our work over the last few years, we have gained experience with modelling a simulation to support the management of mining disasters. But also on how teams adapt to disruptive innovation technology when they manage leakages on an extensive pipe networks carrying warm water for heating. And another on how people make decisions on energy consumption, which will be used to simulate the energy consumption of a new sustainable neighbourhood. Very different applications but similar methods were used.

In the workshop we plan to concretely explore how this type of ethnographic data can be used in a more systematic way to create social simulations.