Mesa Strategy (draft) 21 April 2022

[tpike3]

This is the documentation of Mesa's long-term strategy to drive coding choices. To be discussed in July strategy session.

Purpose

Mesa's purpose is to two fold (1) provide an accessible, rigorous, python based agent based model framework for use to a global community (2) advance the computational tool of Agent Based Modelling to aid humanity's understanding of complex phenomena.

Approach

Develop a rich ecosystem to allow for a varied user base, generically described by 3 archetypes:

• new academic: who needs the easy install and a rich ecosystem of data and behaviors to explore phenomenon
• app developer and decision maker: who needs to be able to use Mesa as a foundation to develop specific production quality models that can aid decision making and policy development in a variety of fields
• advanced researcher: who needs rigor and significant computing power to explore complex phenomena,

Current Status

The main feedback we have gotten has been from Universities, TU Delft, U. Mary Washington, GMU, Delaware Futures (part of University of Delaware), plus many one offs. At this time, our main users appear to be the new academics archetype.