James A. Rising

Environmental Modelling & Software has just published my work on a new technique for coupling models: Probabilistic Coupling. My thoughts on coupled models had been percolating for a couple years, before a session at the International Conference on Conservation Biology in 2013 offered me a chance to try it out.

Probabilistic coupling has three main goals:

• Allowing models to be coupled without distortionary feedback
• Allowing multiple models to inform the same variable
• Allowing models to be coupled with different scales

With these three features, the very nature and approach of coupling models can change. Current model coupling requires carefully connecting models together, plugging inputs into outputs, and then recalibrating to recover realistic behavior again. Instead, this allows for what I call “Agglomerated Modeling”, where models are thrown together into a bucket and almost magically sort themselves out.

The code for the model is available within the OpenWorld framework, as the coupling example.