Thematic tracks

Social Simulation and Modelling

 
Social Simulation is a recent multi-disciplinary effort that has increasingly established new challenges for the Artificial Intelligence and Multi-agent Systems community, by bringing the agent technology to face complex phenomena such as the ones found in social sciences. At the same time, social scientists have been discovering how the computer and especially the advances in artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems can provide a new and exciting tool to tackle the problems of their field, providing a paradigm shift in social sciences. The exchange between researchers in both areas has proven mutually fruitful, as much inspiration in Multi-agent Systems has come from Social Sciences, and these have benefited from more rigourous and operational concepts as well as from principled methodologies with which to face experiments with heterogeneous artificial agents.

Social Simulation (SS) brings together the multi-agent systems (MAS) and agent-based modelling (ABM) communities. The focus of MAS is on the solution of complex 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. Both these communities are now well-established and have many common issues, but there are few opportunities for crossover of ideas between the two communities. This track aims at presenting the most recent advances in multi-agent-based exploratory social simulation from a strong computer science and Artificial Intelligence stance. To promote a multi-disciplinary and cross-influential approach, this track will focus both on ideas coming from Artificial Intelligence 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.

 

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
General issues

  • Agent and social environment modelling
  • Standards for social simulators including inter-operability
  • Self-organisation, 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

 

Paper submission

Submissions must be original and not published elsewhere. Papers should not exceed twelve (12) pages in length and must adhere to the formatting instructions of the conference. Each submission will be peer reviewed by at least three members of the Program Committee. The reviewing process is double blind, so authors should remove names and affiliations from the submitted papers, and must take reasonable care to assure anonymity during the review process. References to own work may be included in the paper, as long as referred to in the third person. Acceptance will be based on the paper’s significance, technical quality, clarity, relevance and originality.

 

Paper Publication

All accepted papers will be published by Springer in a volume of the LNAI-Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series (indexed by the Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge). The number of pages of the accepted contributions has the following limits:

  • Full Regular Papers: Contributions accepted as full papers should contain from 10 to 12 pages in its final version, according to the LNAI series formatting instructions. Extraordinarily, other two additional pages could be considered with a supplementary fee.
  • Short Papers: Contributions accepted as short papers should contain from 4 to 6 pages in its final version, according to the LNAI series formatting instructions.

All accepted papers must be presented orally the conference by one of the authors and at least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference.

 

Important dates

Deadline for paper submission: March 23, 2015
Notification of paper acceptance: 27, April, 2015
Camera-ready papers due: 1, June, 2015
Conference dates: September 8-11, 2015

 

Track Chairs

Luís Antunes
Group for Studies in Social Simulation, LabMAg Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal
Email: xarax (at) ciencias.ulisboa.pt
 
Graçaliz Pereira Dimuro
Federal University of Rio Grande, Rio Grande, Brazil
Email: gracalizdimuro (at) furg.br
 
Pedro Campos
LIAAD/INESC TEC, and Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
Email: pcampos (at) fep.up.pt
 
Juan Pavon
Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Email: jpavon (at) fdi.ucm.es

 

Programme Committee

Frédéric Amblard, Univ. Toulouse 1, France
Pedro Andrade, INPE, Brazil
Tânya Araújo, ISEG, Portugal
Robert Axtell, George Mason Univ., USA
João Balsa, Univ. Lisbon, Portugal
Ana Bazzan, UFRGS, Brazil
François Bousquet, CIRAD/IRRI, Thailand
Amilcar Cardoso, DEIUC, Portugal
Cristiano Castelfranchi, ISTC/CNR, Italia
Shu-Heng Chen, National Chengchi Univ., Taiwan
Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, George Mason Univ., USA
Hélder Coelho, Univ. Lisbon, Portugal
Rosaria Conte, ISTC/CNR Rome, Italy
Nuno David, ISCTE, Portugal
Paul Davidsson, Blekinge Inst. Technology, Sweden
Guillaume Deffuant, Cemagref, France
Alexis Drogoul, IRD, France
Julie Dugdale, Lab. d’Informatique Grenoble, France
Bruce Edmonds, Centre for Policy Modelling, UK
Nigel Gilbert, Univ. Surrey, UK
Nick Gotts, Macaulay Inst., Scotland, UK
David Hales, The Open Univ., UK
Samer Hassan, Univ. Complutense Madrid, Spain
Rainer Hegselmann, Univ. Bayreuth, Germany
Wander Jager, Univ. Groningen, Netherlands
Adolfo Lópes Paredes, Univ. Valladolid, Spain
Pedro Magalhães, ICS, Portugal
Scott Moss, Centre for Policy Modelling, UK
Jean-Pierre Muller, CIRAD, France
Akira Namatame, National Defense Academy, Japan
Fernando Neto, Univ. Pernambuco, Brazil
Carlos Ramos, GECAD — ISEP, Portugal
Juliette Rouchier, Greqam/CNRS, France
David Sallach, Argonne National Lab, Univ. Chicago, USA
Keith Sawyer, Washington Univ. St. Louis, USA
Carles Sierra, IIIA, Spain
Elizabeth Sklar, City Univ. New York, USA
Keiki Takadama, Univ. Electro-communications, Japan
Oswaldo Teran, Univ. Los Andes, Venezuela
Takao Terano, Univ. Tsukuba, Japan
Jan Treur, Vrije Univ. Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Klaus Troitzsch, Univ. Koblenz, Germany
Harko Verhagen, Stockholm Univ., Sweden