Social Sciences

Anthropology/Archaeology

MWGrid: Medieval Warfare on the Grid. WGrid is one of the seven pilot research projects to funded by the AHRC-EPSRC-JISC e-Science Intitiative – This is a collaborative project between The Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity (IAA, Professor Vince Gaffney) and the School of Computer Science (Dr Georgios Theodoropoulos) at the University of Birmingham and seeks to address the problems associated with early military logistics through agent-based modelling and distributed simulations.

SimulPast – The aim of the project is to develop an innovative and interdisciplinary methodological framework to model and simulate ancient societies and their relationship with environmental transformations. The project includes 11 Research Groups from 7 different Institutions with more than 60 researchers from several fields (archaeology, anthropology, computer science, environmental studies, physics, mathematics and sociology). The leader institution is the IMF-CSIC in Barcelona.

Village Ecodynamics Project – “The Village Ecodynamics Project is a network of archaeologists, geologists, geographers, computer scientists and economists seeking to explain key aspects of the late prehistory of the northern Southwest through empirical research and modeling.”

Economics

Agent-Based Computational Economics. This website has four objectives: (1) empirical understanding, (2) normative understanding, (3) qualitative insight and theory generation, and (4) methodological advancement of economic systems.

Agent Based Computational Finance. “Agent based computation finance is an application of agent based computational methods to finance and financial markets. This area borrows heavily on methods developed in other agent based economic environments. This modest web page is designed to give researchers interested in the area a starting point in terms of finding what is available on the web, and useful publications.”

Brookings: Agent-Based Models. “The Agent-based Computational Modeling (ABM) technique pioneered at Brookings is an effective public policy research tool for complex social systems. ABM rigorously incorporates rich and diverse human behaviors; facilitates interdisciplinary research and stakeholder participation; and provides an efficient test-bed for the simulation of public policy interventions.”

Center for Complexity in Business – “The study of Complex Systems is the interdisciplinary study of large groups of interacting, heterogeneous, autonomous entities operating in dynamic, rich, and temporal environments. Complex Systems Science is not defined by a particular group of phenomena, but rather a way of viewing phenomena. Complex systems arise in a number of varied domains from economics to ecology to social science. In each of these domains there are problems that are defined by a large number of individuals that give rise to an emergent pattern, while at the same time that emergent pattern constrains the decisions of the individuals. For instance, in economics, the rise and fall of stock prices is defined by the aggregate patterns of stock purchases, but the ability for traders to buy and sell stocks is dependent on the historical price of those very same stocks.”

The Centre for Computational Finance and Economic Agents (CCFEA). “The Centre for Computational Finance and Economic Agents (CCFEA) is an innovative, interdisciplinary and laboratory based teaching and research Centre which is a showcase for cutting edge computational and evolutionary methods to simulate markets with artificially intelligent agents and to design real time trading and risk management systems. CCFEA hosts advanced workshops and seminars by experts in the area of Computational Finance and Economics. The centre currently has over 50 Masters and PhD students.”

Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research – “is part of the School of Informatics and Computing and the Pervasive Technology Institute of Indiana University. The center supports and enhances the research efforts of the complex systems group, which has been active within the School since 2004. CNetS is meant to foster interdisciplinary research in all areas related to complex networks and systems.”

Complex Markets – “Complex markets are markets whose growth and evolution are primarily driven by personal interactions among potential and current adopters. The personal interactions, typically word of mouth, imitation, and network effects, lie at the micro level of the system, while the aggregate results, typically adoption or sales, lie at the macro level. Agent based modeling including cellular automata and small-world are at the base of the micro-modeling.”







SCE – Society for Computational Economics: Computational economics explores the intersection of economics and computation. These areas include agent-based computational modeling, computational econometrics and statistics, computational finance, computational modeling of dynamic macroeconomic systems, computational tools for the design of automated Internet markets, programming tools specifically designed for computational economics, and pedagogical tools for the teaching of computational economics. Some of these areas are unique to computational economics, while others extend traditional areas of economics to new areas through computational techniques.

Psychology

Agent-Based-Modeling Laboratory. Welcome to the Agent-Based Modeling Laboratory at UC Davis. Our goal is to effectively use agent-based computer models to better understand the behavior of individuals and populations in social and evolutionary settings. We are also interested in pursuing a deeper understanding of agent-based models compared to how they are usually implemented.

GEEP: Group Experiment Environment Project. “Our goal with GEEP is to scientifically observe, explain, and model how groups of people behave when their behavior depends on the behaviors of others around them. Our games provide a controlled environment for studying group behavior. Our typical research cycle is to first observe group behavior in a GEEP game, and then to develop agent-based computational models of the behavior we observe. By participating in these experiments, you can find out what it feels like to be part of larger group with a mind of its own.”



Human wave



The Social Dynamics Laboratory at Cornell University. “The Social Dynamics Laboratory at Cornell University studies the interplay between network topology and the dynamics of social interaction, using computational models, data from on-line networks, and laboratory experiments with human participants.”

Social Sciences

CABSS Center for Agent-Based Social Systems Science was established as a center under the support of the university in April, 2005 to develop the mission of the 21st century COE program Creation of Agent-Based Social Systems Sciences.

Complex Science for a Complex World. A book on human ecosystems as a subset of complex adaptive systems.

Computational Legal Studies. CLS aims to disseminate legal or law related studies that employ a computational or complex systems component. They hope this venue will serve as a coordinating device for those interested in using such techniques to consider the development of legal systems and/or implementation of more reasoned public policy.

Cooperation Commons. Interdisciplinary study of cooperation and collective action.

CRESS. Centre for research in social simulation is a multidisciplinary centre bringing together the social sciences, software engineering and agent-based computing to promote and support the use of social simulation in research in the human sciences.

http://www.ics-graduateschool.nl/index.php?page=modeling-norms-and-networks

Encefalus. Studying the complex interaction between brain, society and mind.

FEARLUS – Framework for Evaluation and Assessment of Regional Land Use Scenarios.

Geosimulation. “Geosimulation is a catch-all phrase that can be used to represent a new wave of spatial simulation modeling that has come to the fore in very recent years. Besides traditional urban modeling and simulation, the intellectual roots of geosimulation derive from recent developments in computer science and geographic information science. The geosimulation approach draws together a diversity of theories and techniques, offering a unique perspective that traditional simulation has commonly lacked: a view of urban phenomena as a result of the collective dynamics of interacting objects, often represented at the scale of individual households, people, and units of real estate and at time-scales approaching “real time”.”

ICS – Modeling norms and networks: “The overarching focus of this research line is on modeling the interdependent dynamics of social norms and social networks. Substantively, we are interested in two main questions. First, how and under what conditions does social integration arise in groups that are socially or culturally diverse? Second, how and under what conditions do stable social norms arise in groups with divergent interests and preferences? Social networks play a key role both for social integration and for social norms.”

S4: Spatial Simulation for the Social Scienes. “The main objectives of the S4 Interactive Platform are to improve the diffusion of results from research in advanced spatial modelling. In addition, the site is designed to support the development of tools and actions which aim to improve the coherence of knowledge and experience in the field of spatial modelling.”





