"This book, a reference survey of social simulation work comprehensively collects the most exciting developments in the field. Drawing research contributions from a vibrant community of experts on social simulation, it provides a set of unique and innovative approaches, ranging from agent-based modeling to empirically based simulations, as well as applications in business, governmental, scientific, and other contexts"--Provided by publisher.

This book is the conference proceedings of ESSA 2013, the 9th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association. ESSA conferences constitute annual events, which serve as an international platform for the exchange of ideas and discussion of cutting-edge research in the field of social simulations, both from the theoretical as well as applied perspective. This book consists of 33 articles, which are divided into four themes: Methods for the development of simulation models, Applications of agent-based modeling, Adaptive behavior, social interactions and global environmental change and using qualitative data to inform behavioral rules. We are convinced that this book will serve interested readers as a useful compendium which presents in a nutshell the most recent advances at the frontiers of social simulation research.

​This book presents the state-of-the-art in social simulation as presented at the Social Simulation Conference 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden. It covers the developments in applications and methods of social simulation, addressing societal issues such as socio-ecological systems and policy making. Methodological issues discussed include large-scale empirical calibration, model sharing and interdisciplinary research, as well as decision making models, validation and the use of qualitative data in simulation modeling. Research areas covered include archaeology, cognitive science, economics, organization science, and social simulation education. This collection gives readers insight into the increasing use of social simulation in both its theoretical development and in practical applications such as policy making whereby modelling and the behavior of complex systems is key. The book will appeal to students, researchers and professionals in the various fields.

This book deals with research in open challenges in Management Engineering in the 21st century, as well as selected opportunities and solutions to remedy them. Management Engineering is an emerging field that extends the analytical methods used in traditional Industrial Engineering and Industrial Organization to address the economic, behavioral and social dimensions of companies and their environments. Management Engineering extends its domain beyond the firm and the market to encompass the modeling and policy design of physical landscapes populated by social agents. The developments of the 21st century have made it necessary to adopt an integrative and global view of the different methodologies and tools that facilitate managers’ decision-making processes, ranging from the strategic to the operational level. This book equips readers with precisely these urgently needed resources.

IDT (Intelligent Decision Technologies) seeks an interchange of research on intelligent systems and intelligent technologies which enhance or improve decision making in industry, government and academia. The focus is interdisciplinary in nature, and includes research on all aspects of intelligent decision technologies, from fundamental development to the applied system. It constitutes a great honor and pleasure for us to publish the works and new research results of scholars from the First KES International Symposium on Intelligent Decision Technologies (KES IDT’09), hosted and organized by University of Hyogo in conjunction with KES International (Himeji, Japan, April, 2009). The symposium was concerned with theory, design, development, implementation, testing and evaluation of intelligent decision systems. Its topics included intelligent agents, fuzzy logic, multi-agent systems, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, expert systems, intelligent decision making support systems, information retrieval systems, geographic information systems, and knowledge management systems. These technologies have the potential to support decision making in many areas of management, international business, finance, accounting, marketing, healthcare, military applications, production, networks, traffic management, crisis response, and human interfaces.

Despite being a relatively young sub-discipline, European environmental sociology has changed considerably in the last decades towards more interdisciplinary collaborations and problem solving. Current trends such as global environmental modernization and processes of economic, political and socio-cultural globalization, fuelled by developments of transport, environmental flows, scientific uncertainty, and information technologies, have fostered new conceptual approaches that move beyond classical sociological mind-sets toward broader attempts to connect to other disciplines.

This volume examines all aspects of using agent or individual-based simulation. This approach represents systems as individual elements having their own set of differing states and internal processes. The interactions between elements in the simulation represent interactions in the target systems. What makes this "social" is that it can represent an observed society. Social systems include all those systems where the components have individual agency but also interact with each other. This includes human societies and groups, but also increasingly socio-technical systems where the internet-based devices form the substrate for interaction. These systems are central to our lives, but are among the most complex known. This poses particular problems for those who wish to understand them. The complexity often makes analytic approaches infeasible but, on the other hand, natural language approaches are also inadequate for relating intricate cause and effect. This is why individual and agent-based computational approaches hold out the possibility of new and deeper understanding of such systems. This handbook marks the maturation of this new field. It brings together summaries of the best thinking and practices in this area from leading researchers in the field and constitutes a reference point for standards against which future methodological advances can be judged. This second edition adds new chapters on different modelling purposes and applying software engineering methods to simulation development. Revised existing content will keep the book up-to-date with recent developments. This volume will help those new to the field avoid "reinventing the wheel" each time, and give them a solid and wide grounding in the essential issues. It will also help those already in the field by providing accessible overviews of current thought. The material is divided into four sections: Introduction, Methodology, Mechanisms, and Applications. Each chapter starts with a very brief section called ‘Why read this chapter?’ followed by an abstract, which summarizes the content of the chapter. Each chapter also ends with a section on ‘Further Reading’. Whilst sometimes covering technical aspects, this second edition of Simulating Social Complexity is designed to be accessible to a wide range of researchers, including both those from the social sciences as well as those with a more formal background. It will be of use as a standard reference text in the field and also be suitable for graduate level courses.