Explanation Exploration: Exploring Emergent Behavior

Understanding emergent behavior(s) exhibited in simulations poses an interesting challenge. Emergence can represent a valid behavior arising from seemingly unrelated phenomena, or it can reflect an error in a model or its implementation. We propose a new method for gathering insight into emergent behavior in simulations using the model adaptation technique, COERCE. COERCE allows a user to efficiently adapt a model to meet new requirements and can be employed to explore emergent behavior exhibited in a simulation. A subject matter expert (SME) can coerce a simulation to gather insight into characteristics of the emergent behavior as the simulated phenomenon is driven toward conditions of interest.