A year of data and modelling insights

It was a real pleasure to welcome more than 240 modellers in person to the long-delayed Modelling World event in October 2021. The world had changed since our last in-person gathering, and there was much to catch up on – and to plan for. We’re inviting you to help us make the most of Modelling World opportunities during 2022, says event content director Juliana O’Rourke

Warren Hatch is CEO of Good Judgment, the commercial successor to the Superforecasting research project led by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner

Warren Hatch is CEO of Good Judgment, the commercial successor to the Superforecasting research project led by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner

Changes in societal and travel trends, and the push to decarbonise transport and development – plus any updated techniques and tools to help us understand and manage such change – were the key issues for Modelling World 2021. 

We wanted to capture your thoughts and insights on these topics during the event – and wish to continue doing so during 2022 – hence our development of several interactive sessions which we propose, with your help, to turn into longer term projects.

The plan is to capture a wide range of insights, to process and analyse the inputs, and then to share outputs for discussion with our data and modelling community during 2022.

To get the ball rolling, please take our anonymous survey

We therefore have an action-packed year ahead planned: we will be following up these key issues at Modelling World International during the month of April 2022 – a series of virtual events connecting modellers in Australia and New Zealand, the Middle East, India, the USA and Europe – and culminating in Modelling World UK on 8-9 June 2022, at which our international series will conclude.

Modelling World projects for 2022

1. Decarbonisation 

Project one: Modelling World 2021 included several sessions on the key technical challenges of modelling carbon interventions, including new tools, and these will be followed up.

2. Future modellers

Project two is around the people, skills, attitudes and modelling approaches that we need to nurture in future. We’re developing the polling we completed at Modelling World 2021 with a new, more detailed survey, and will report back on results at Modelling World 2022 on 8-9 June 2022. 

3. Forecasting

Project three is about improving forecasting skills. Those modellers who took part in the Superforecasting exercises and workshop in October will understand how the processes of superforecasting can help modellers to improve their techniques.

During 2022, we will be working again with Superforecaster Warren Hatch, CEO of Good Judgment, to improve analysis of a range of long-term scenarios. Says Hatch: “We want to understand which of the scenarios we set out – and they’re all plausible scenarios – are the more probable. We can devise testable propositions that will tell us which direction we need to move in, and over a one-, two-, three- or five-year horizon?

"We craft our questions with modelling experts, and then forecast them with a cohort of experts, as well as with the wider crowd on our public site, Good Judgment Open, giving us independent inputs about which of these plausible scenarios are more probable. In short, we make use of collective insight to reduce uncertainty and make our forecasts better; very much an interesting proposition for policy makers.”

Transport modellers are more like foxes and less like hedgehogs…

After the Superforecasting session at Modelling World 2021 we know that many modellers have what it takes to become Superforecasters. Participants had the opportunity to test themselves in three critical areas that Good Judgment researchers have found to correlate with forecast accuracy. As a group, these modellers ranked right in line with professional Superforecasters in pattern recognition, cognitive reflection, and the ability to challenge their own assumptions as actively open-minded thinkers.  

If you'd like to see how you fare, take this online survey (https://tinyurl.com/2p93tsje). Only you will see your individual results. As for the reference to foxes and hedgehogs – see here https://tinyurl.com/42mv8s57

Forecasts are only as good as the questions we ask. So the next step we took in Birmingham was to crowd-source topics that matter to modellers in the real world.

We zeroed in on electric vehicles, then asked Good Judgment’s seasoned Question Team to turn these topics into testable propositions so that everyone can make a forecast.  These are now posted on our public forecasting site Good Judgment Open, so please come make a prediction on how many Battery Electric Vehicles will be registered in the UK (https://tinyurl.com/2p8btyvp) over the coming year, and how many cars Tesla will deliver (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fmnm4)  

More to come at Modelling World International, to take place online throughout April 2022, and at Modelling World UK, to take place at Edgbaston Stadium, Birmingham, on 8 and 9 June 2022. Please contact us if you need more information:

Content and editorial: juliana.orourke@landor.co.uk

Sponsorship and exhibition: daniel@landor.co.uk