When: Monday March 4, 2024, 13.00-15.00
Where: Aurora B9110, Campus Wageningen

Every-day and long-term choices of individuals and populations are complex phenomena influenced by several factors, including biological, psychological, social, cultural, environmental and economic elements. To better understand and support adaptive decision making in context, we are presenting the open-source ecosystem “SynthEco.” The platform utilizes statistically representative synthetic populations derived from census data for a given geospatial granularity and is demographically connected to cross-sectional health and behaviour surveys, as well as environmental data such as rural and urban infrastructure, spaces and surroundings. Individuals and systems of systems are analysed inside nested and modular structures, with individuals being embedded in their local community, communities in cities and towns, cities in administrative regions, and regions in national countries. This allows for the analysis of individuals’ multidimensional behaviour and outcomes over time while considering the environmental and social context they are acting within. Furthermore, their interactions with and access to enterprises and organisations can be captured. Taking food as entry point and Montreal (Quebec, Canada) as proof of principle, we will illustrate the individual-to-enterprise-to-society levels of geo-spatial analysis to consider the local availability, diversity, and accessibility to a range of food outlets and their behavioral, health, and economic correlations, while considering a variety of moderating influences. SynthEco represents a comprehensive tool kit enabling the application of computational modelling such as agent-based models (ABMs) to study individual, enterprise, and population choice behavior and impact pathways, offering valuable insights for policymakers, researchers, and action leaders from private and public sectors interested in promoting affordable, sustainable, equitable, and healthier choices at scale. Current work and future development in the USA, Europe and Africa are further introduced to serve as foundation for panel and general discussion.

Antonia Gieschen is an Assistant Professor in Predictive Analytics at the University of Edinburgh Business School, United Kingdom. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center with Carnegie Mellon University, where her research dealt with population synthesis through iterative proportional fitting and the integration of representative and non-representative samples into interconnected ecosystems of data. Her research utilises approaches from machine learning and computational social sciences to address topics in different application areas, including public health, financial wellbeing, food access, and tourism, with a focus on the interconnection of datasets and their geospatial relationships. In relation to that, Dr Gieschen is also interested in the use of open-source software and open data. Currently, she is investigating financial vulnerability and relating it to geospatial inequality and the wider wellbeing of a person, as well as food systems and local access to healthy and affordable food. She is part of the SynthEco research group, where she is leading the synthetic population creation and cohort data integration. Dr Gieschen holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh on cluster analysis in the context of spatial and spatio-temporal data.

Laurette Dubé, initially trained as a nutritionist, also holds degrees in finances (MBA), marketing (MPS), and behavioral decision-making/consumer psychology (PhD). Dr. Dubé is Full Professor at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University and holds the James McGill Chair of Consumer and Lifestyle Psychology and Marketing. Her research focuses on the study of affects, behavioral economics, and neurobehavioral process-es underlying consumption, lifestyle, and health behavior. Her translational research examines how such knowledge can inspire effective interventions. She is also the founder and scientific director of the McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics, a unique initiative to push the boundaries of science to tackle societal  and economic challenges and foster individual and collective health and wealth.