Simulating Social Complexity

Using agent-based computational approaches Simulating Social Complexity treats systems consisting of individual elements having each their own set of differing states, and which are usefully interpretable as interacting elements of a society. The focus will be on human society, but can be extended to include social animals or artificial agents where such work enhances our understanding of human society. §The phenomena of interest then result from the dynamics of the interaction of social actors in an essential way (emergence) and are not reducible to considering single actors or a representative actor and a representative environment. §It is this complexity that (typically) makes analytic approaches infeasible and natural language approaches inadequate for relating intricate cause and effect. The introduction of accessible agent-based modeling opens up the world of social complexity to formal representation in a more natural and direct manner. In particular, it is no longer necessary to distort a model with the introduction of overly strong assumptions simply in order to obtain analytic tractability. §This makes agent-based modeling equally accessible and suitable to scientists of all backgrounds. The outcomes of such models can be displayed and animated in ways that make them more interpretable by experts and stakeholders. §This handbook is intended to help in this process of maturation of this new field. It brings together, through the collaborative effort of many of leading researchers, summaries of the best thinking and practice in this area and constitutes a reference point for standards against which future methodological advances are judged.§This book will help those entering into the field so that they do not have to reinvent the wheel each time - and it will help those already in the field by providing accessible overviews of current thought. The material is divided into four sections: Introductory, 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 of Further Reading briefly describing three to eight items that a newcomer might read next.