SSM 2013 - Social Simulation and Modelling

Social Simulation (SS) is an inter-disciplinary area which brings together researchers active within the multi-agent systems (MAS) community and the agent-based modelling (ABM) community. The focus of MAS is on the solution of complex engineering problems related to the construction, deployment and efficient operation of agent-based systems, while the focus of ABM is on simulating and synthesising social behaviours in order to understand real social systems (human, animal and even digital) via the development and testing of new theories.
As evidenced at other scientific meetings, the MAS and ABM communities have much to learn from each other. For example, the MAS community has developed agent-based systems that employ sophisticated and elaborated mechanisms (i.e., rich internal models) to solve complex problems, but these techniques are also useful for addressing sociological issues of co-operation, trust and power hierarchies from the social science viewpoint. In contrast, the ABM community has studied and developed techniques and models for real world societies such as companies or economy and they are tested and validated using experimental data, but these models are also useful for real world applications from the engineering viewpoint.
Topics of Interest
In EPIA 2013 Social Simulation and Modelling thematic track, we bring together both these scientific communities to foster the derivation of methods that overcome each other’s week points. To promote this cross-influence, the SSM track series focuses on both the ideas coming from computer science as a new technology to provide insights into ABM community and the ideas coming from social sciences as new metaphors to provide insights into MAS community. General topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
General issues:
- Agent and social environment modelling
- Standards for social simulators including inter-operability
- Self-organization, scalability, robustness in SS
- Policy applications
- SS applications
- Methodologies and techniques that link MAS and ABM works
- Simulation
- Decision making
MAS issues:
- Grid-computing for SS
- Visualisation and analytic tools
- Managing interactions in large-scale systems
- Simulation languages and formalisms
- Complexity
ABM issues:
- Formal and agent-based models of social behaviour and social order
- Social structures and norms
- Cognitive modelling and social simulation
- The emergence of co-operation and co-ordinated action
- Agent-based experimental economics
- Empirically-based agent-based modelling