ESSA 2014 - 5th Summer School of the European Social Simulation Association

The LSDS members had expertise in the development of computer models of social simulation (a.k.a., "artificial societies in silico) in order to provide explanatory answers to questions raised by our clients.
A social simulation model is a computational system specifically designed to replicate a particular social group. In can be calibrated, or initialized with attributes from the components of the human social system that replicates, and can generate, as an emerging result, patterns of simulated aggregate social behavior along time. These models can reproduce the processes of interaction between the "virtual agents" that compose them, as well as between these agents and their environment (ecological, institutional and normative), even it is possible to replicate and explore the dynamics and final results (behaviors and opinions) that emerge out from the simulated social life. Although the aggregate behavior may appear as very complex, this complexity is in fact generated by a set of simple mechanisms (psychological, social, physical) that rules the multiple interactions between the individual agents. The scope of social simulation domain is any social system where autonomous individuals make decisions in an environment of institutional and environmental constraints (natural resources, animals, humans, machines, or mixed systems).