720335Sandtable Simulation Services PrototypeClosedGRD Development of PrototypeInnovate UKThe UK media landscape has undergone a massive transformation in the past ten years. It is more fragmented than it has ever been, more complex, and faster-changing. Information sources that are important today may be useless next week. Ideas that are popular in the morning may be old hat by the afternoon. For anybody who wants to be heard by the UK population - advertisers, governments and charities alike - this fragmentation, complexity and dynamism create a real problem. Knowing where to place messages, and how much to spend doing it, is much more difficult. Sandtable has developed a computer-based technique for simulating human behaviour that can help to address this difficulty. We have developed an engine on which to run computer simulations of populations, their attitudes, their interactions and how they behave, and the influences on their behaviour. We have also, in an earlier SMART grant project, developed a platform for building confidence in our simulations, by allowing them to be run repeatedly, with varying inputs, so that the relationship between input assumptions and emergent behaviour becomes clearer. We have shown this platform, which we call our validation platform, to our clients and our partners, and have used it to solve planning problems they have been trying to address. We have shown that the technique is of value. However, in order to realise the value of the technique in a real-world context - supporting the planning activity of advertisers, governments or charities - a number of significant challenges need to be dealt with. Results need to be delivered much faster. Simulations need to be bigger. The technique needs to fit with the way planners and analysts work. Many people need to be able to use it at once. The objective of this project is to overcome these challenges by working with marketing planners and their clients to design and build a prototype service and test it in a real world context.