How It Works
Individual clarity. Societal insights. ONEMODEL is how we deliver both: it computes welfare for each individual (individual clarity), then aggregates those individuals into the social value of the whole group (societal insights).
ONEMODEL is the CANCEA platform SVT uses to produce social value evidence. Built and maintained by CANCEA over more than 20 years, it is a model that represents individual people and how they interact with systems (an agent-based model). It measures social value across hundreds of topics together, person by person, in one connected model.
It is not a spreadsheet tool. It is not a survey analysis platform. It is not a value-transfer database. It is a simulation engine that models the welfare paths of individual persons through complex systems - tracking how interventions change their circumstances, their opportunities, and their lives.
ONEMODEL represents individual people (or representative people) - not population averages. For each person, it tracks observable circumstances such as income, housing, health, employment, and location, and estimates wellbeing measures such as life satisfaction, sense of security, and social connection.
For any intervention being evaluated, ONEMODEL produces two trajectories per person: scenario (with the intervention in place) and counterfactual (without). Social value is the measured difference between these paths.
Hundreds of social value topics are generated within the same model, person by person. They share the same persons, mechanisms, boundaries, and time steps - so interactions between topics are captured automatically, not stapled together afterwards.
ONEMODEL does not produce a single aggregate number and stop. It reports who gains and who loses, by how much, through what channels (income, health, housing, connection), over what time path, and with what uncertainty.
Wellbeing changes are translated into dollars using a stated rule that reflects the person's circumstances, income, and context (a local valuation function). This is not a single universal $/WELLBY rate.
| Domain | Examples |
|---|---|
| Population | Demographics, household formation, migration, ageing, mortality |
| Housing | Tenure, affordability, dwelling conditions, location, rental markets |
| Income and employment | Labour-force participation, earnings, transfers, pension income |
| Health | Physical and mental health states, health service use, disability |
| Education | Attainment, skill development, training outcomes |
| Social connection | Loneliness, community participation, trust, belonging |
| Wellbeing | Life satisfaction, financial anxiety, sense of security |
| Fiscal | Government revenue, transfer payments, service costs |
| Infrastructure | Transport access, community facilities, service proximity |
All domains are modelled within one system. Interactions across domains are represented - not assumed away.
| Architecture | Agent-based computational model with system-dynamics elements |
| Scale | Individual persons or representative agents within institutional, spatial, and market environments |
| Time | Event-time modelling with calendar-time reporting coordinates |
| Calibration | Canadian population datasets (Statistics Canada, General Social Survey, Canadian Quality of Life Framework) |
| Validation | Multi-level: face validity, pattern matching, sensitivity analysis, boundary testing |
| Counterfactual generation | Structural: same model logic generates both scenario and counterfactual |
| System integrity | Satisfies S4CI framework (single-system, consistency, causality, conservation, invariance, closure, coherence) |
| Output | Person-level welfare paths, dollar values, present values, distributional reports, boundary ledgers, sensitivity results |
| Development history | 20+ years of continuous development and calibration |
| Engagement history | 400+ client engagements across government, pension, housing, health, education, and community sectors |
ONEMODEL was developed by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis (CANCEA) and is operated within the Symcura group. It represents more than two decades of investment in computational social science - building a platform that generates decision-grade evidence for complex human systems.
The Social Value Trust is the public-facing brand through which ONEMODEL's social value capabilities are made available to clients. The science, the platform, and the team are the same.
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