The Social Simulation Conference 2017 was held in the O’Brien Centre in UCD, Dublin on 25 – 29 September, 2017 – Social Simulation for a Digital Society. This is the 13th Annual Conference of the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA) which is the main European scientific society to promote social simulation and computational social science. The aim of this international conference is to share and foster a deeper understanding of how complex social problems can be understood through computational simulations and techniques.

About SSC 2017

This is the 13th Annual Conference of the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA) which is the main European scientific society to promote social simulation and computational social science. This year’s conference will explore the theme “Social Simulation for a Digital Society” through stimulating cross-disciplinary research and using applied and methodological tools in a transforming society.

Conference Chair: 

Diane Payne

Local Organizing Committee:

• Pablo Lucas
• Thomas Grund
• Nial Friel
• Jos Elkink
• Tamara Hochstrasser
• Adrian Ottewill

Programme committee

Abhljit Sengupta, Andreas Ernst, Andreas Flache, Andreas Koch, Bogumił Kamiński, Bruce Edmonds, Cesar Garcia Diaz, Emile Chappin, Emma Norling, Felix John, Francisco Grimaldi, Frank Dignum, Fred Amblard, Gary Polhill, Gillian Golden, Gunnar Dressler, Iris Lorschield, Jean-Daniel Kant, Jean-Pierre Muller, Jennifer Badham, Jordi Sabater Mir, Jose Manuel Galan, Jose-Garcia Valdecasas, Julia Eberlen, Klaus G. Troitzsch, Lex Hoogduim, Marco Janssen, Mario Paolucci, Martin Neumann, Melania Burit, Michael  Mas, Michael Moehring, Oscar Kraan, Pablo Lucas, Petra Ahrweller, Pietro Terna, Przemyslaw Szufel, Rainer Hegselmann, Riccardo Boero, Rosanna Garcia, Ruth Meyer, Setsuya Kurahashi, Stefano Balietti, Stephen Kinsella, Tina Balke, Virginia Dignum, Wander Jager, and William Kennedy

Impression

List of Conference Topics

The conference topics include, but are not limited to, the following list. Unlisted but related topics are also acceptable, provided that they fit in the domain of Social Simulation.

Tools and methods

• Advanced distributed computing, Agent ontologies,
• Agent-embodied artificial intelligence, Participatory and Human-in-the-Loop simulations,
• Approaches of aggregating-disaggregating problems,
• Coupling simulations and optimization methods,
• Data analysis software for simulations,
• Data generating models,
• Experiment design and data farming for simulations,
• Model replication, verification and validation,
• Programming computational frameworks,
• Role playing games and social simulation,
• Simulation metamodels,
• Social simulation and laboratory experiments,Socially inspired software applications (peer-to-peer, distributed trust etc.),
• Social simulation and software design, Advanced computing technologies (e.g. the grid) and social simulation,
• Statistical and data mining techniques for simulated data,
• Techniques for visualizing, interpreting and analyzing simulation outputs.
• Using qualitative data to inform behavioural rules in social simulation

Applications of Agent-based Modelling

• Agent-based computational economics and finance,
• Archaeology and History,
• Cognitive models and social simulation,
• Coupled human-natural systems,
• Crisis management,
• Demographic change simulation,
• Emergence and evolution of institutions,
• Emergence of social structures and norms,
• Epidemiology and pharmacoeconomics,
• Group decisions and collective behaviors,
• Information and opinion dynamics,
• Innovation diffusion,
• Integrated social/physical modelling for environmental policy,
• Market design, mechanism design & auctions,
• Market dynamics and consumer behaviour,
• Policy issues,
• Privacy, safety and security,
• Public policy and regulatory issues,
• Resource management and environmental practices,
• Resource management, environmental practices & policy,
• Social and regional disparities,
• Social complexity,
• Social conflict and cooperation,
• Social heterogeneity and scaling issues,
• Social media and volunteered information,
• Social networks and their dynamics, Computational organization theory,
• Social-spatial segregation modeling,
• Societal transitions,
• Trust and norm dynamics, reputation.

Detailed scientific programme

See Detailed scientific programme (pdf).

Speakers

Professor of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research, IEEE Fellow, and Director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems – Carnegie Mellon University

Dr. Carley is a Professor of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research, IEEE Fellow, and Director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. She  joined  Carnegie  Mellon  in  1984  as  Assistant Professor  Sociology  and  Information  Systems.  In 1990 she became Associate Professor of Sociology and Organizations, in 1998 Professor of Sociology, Organizations, and Information Technology, and in 2002, attained her current role as Professor of Computation, Organization, and Society.  She is also the CEO of Carley Technologies Inc.  aka Netanomics.

Dr. Carley’s research combines cognitive science, sociology, and computer science to address complex social and organizational issues. Her  most  notable  research  contribution was the establishment of Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) – and the associated theory and methodology for examining large high‐ dimensional time variant networks. Her research on DNA has resulted in tools for analyzing large‐scale dynamic networks and various multi‐agent simulation systems. Her group has developed tools for extracting sentiment, social and semantic networks from social media and other textual data (AutoMap), simulating epidemiological models (BioWar), simulating covert networks (DyNet), and simulating changes in beliefs and practice given information campaigns (Construct). Her ORA system is one of the premier network analysis and visualization engines supporting geo‐temporal analysis of social network and meta‐ network data. It is used worldwide and at several of the combatant commands. Illustrative projects include assessment of IRS outreach activities, assessment of impact of NextGen on airline re‐rerouting, counter‐terrorism modeling, counter‐narcotics modeling, assessment of design of public‐health departments, mapping the global cyber‐attack network, and social media based assessment of crises such as Benghazi, Darfur, and the Arab Spring.

Education Dr. Carley received SB degrees in Economics and in Political Science from M.I.T., and a PhD degree in Sociology from Harvard University.

Publications Among Dr. Carley’s many scientific publications, she co‐authored papers “Exploring Characteristics of Suspended Users and Network Stability on Twitter” (2016), “Transition Networks in a Cohort of Patients with Congestive Heart Failure” (2015), “Remote assessment of countries’ nuclear, biological, and cyber capabilities: joint motivation and latent capability approach” (2015), “Destabilizing Terrorist Networks” (2003), “The Impact of US Cyber Policies on Cyber‐Attacks Trend” (2016), “Rapid Modeling and Analyzing Networks Extracted from Pre‐Structured News Articles” (2012), “An Incremental Algorithm for Updating Betweenness Centrality and k‐Betweenness Centrality and Its Performance on Realistic Dynamic Social Network Data” (2015).

Honors Dr. Carley is an IEEE Fellow. She is the recipient of the Allen Newell award for research excellence. She has served as President of the North American Association for Computational and Organizational Simulation (2003‐2004) and of the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (1999‐2000). She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sociology and Computers Section of the ASA (2001). In 2011 she received the Simmel Award for advances in the area of social networks from INSNA and became a senior member of the IEEE. She has served as a Task Force Member of the Defense Science Board and of Geographic Information Science Panel of the Strategic Command. She has served on a committee and several panels of the National Research Council including ones on the military, big data, and geo‐spatial analytics and was a member of the DHS‐HSSTAC.

Prof. Blake LeBaron

Abram L. and Thelma Sachar Chair – International Economics at the International Business School, Brandeis University

Blake LeBaron has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He is the Abram L. and Thelma Sachar Chair of International Economics at the International Business School, Brandeis University. LeBaron was at the University of Wisconsin from 1988-1998, and also served as director of the Economics Program at The Santa Fe Institute in 1993. He was a Sloan Fellow, and is a recent recipient of the Market Technician’s Association Mike Epstein award. He currently directs the Economics Ph.D. program at Brandeis, and is part of a Brandeis interdisciplinary research and teaching group interested in modeling dynamics in a wide range of fields.

LeBaron’s research has concentrated on the issue of nonlinear behavior of financial and macroeconomic time series. He has been influential both in the statistical detection of nonlinearities and in describing their qualitative behavior in many series. LeBaron’s current interests are in understanding the quantitative dynamics of interacting systems of adaptive agents and how these systems replicate observed real world phenomenon. Also, LeBaron is interested in understanding some of the observed behavioral characteristics of traders in financial markets. This behavior includes strategies such as technical analysis and portfolio optimization, along with policy questions such as foreign exchange intervention. In general, he seeks to find out the empirical implications of learning and adaptation as applied to finance and macroeconomics.

Michael W. Macy

Goldwin Smith Professor of Arts and Sciences and Director of the Social Dynamics Lab – University of Cornell

Michael Macy (B.A., Ph.D Harvard; M.A. Stanford) is currently Goldwin Smith Professor of Arts and Sciences at Cornell and Director of the Social Dynamics Lab, with a dual appointment in the Departments of Sociology and Information Science. With support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Minerva Initiative, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and Google, his research team has used computational models, online laboratory experiments, and digital traces of device-mediated interaction to explore familiar but enigmatic social patterns, such as circadian rhythms, network topololgy and economic opportunity, lifestyle politics, the willingness to “pay it forward,” the mesh of civilizations, the spread of complex contagions, the polarization of opinion, segregation of neighborhoods, the emergence and collapse of fads, the spread of self-destructive behaviors, and the critical mass in collective action. His research has been published in leading journals, including Science, PNAS, Nature Human Behaviour, American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and Annual Review of Sociology. 

Here is the podcast with interviews with Michael Macy

Prof. Dr. Arnout van de Rijt

Full Professor of Sociology and Institutions – Utrecht University

Arnout van de Rijt received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University in 2007. Since 2016 he is Professor of Sociology and Institutions at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. At Utrecht University he serves as Designated Chair in the strategic theme Institutions for Open Societies. Van de Rijt is currently also Associate Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University in the USA (on leave). At Stony Brook University he is core faculty in the Institute for Advanced Computational Science and co-leads the Center for Computational Social Science.”

For his work on social network analysis Van de Rijt won the 2010 Freeman young scholar award from the International Network for Social Network Analysis. In this research, he has used social simulation to study the properties of networks that emerge if agents follow certain decision rules when forming and severing network ties.

In more recent work, Van de Rijt’s focuses on rich-get-richer dynamics. Using formal models and simulation he studies the conditions under which small, random differences in early success between people can with time, through positive feedback, grow into large gaps between the successful and unsuccessful. He tests these models using large-scale online experiments. This work is funded by NSF grant $275,000 “Field experiments and formal models of arbitrary inequality” of which van de Rijt is the sole PI.

Industry

SSC 2017 welcomes industry delegates to attend the conference. Daily Passes and full registrations are available.

Conference parner: RTI International

RTI International is an independent, nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving
the human condition. Clients rely on us to answer questions that demand an objective and
multidisciplinary approach—one that integrates expertise across the social and lab.
For more information, visit www.rti.org.

Sponsors

          

           

Exhibitors

Irish Academy Training provides media training, specialising in radio interview skills for scientists. The Academy provides training to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Dublin City Council, Bank of Ireland etc. Visit Website