TUESDAY May 14
Day 1 – Tuesday May 14
09:30 - 10:30
INSPIRATIONAL TALK
By Hang Xiong (Huazhong Agricultural University, China)
Policy evaluation with the simulation of micro-macro link: rationale and practices
10:30 - 11:00
ESSA in focus (1)
By Melania Borit (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
ESSA is the European Social Simulation Association. Founded more than 20 years ago, ESSA is the world’s largest society for Social Simulation. During this session, the ESSA Management Committee would like to engage the participants (both ESSA and non-ESSA members) in discussions about several topics that the social simulation community finds relevant, among others:
- how to organise common methodological learning;
- how to work more effectively with other associations around the world;
- how to become a more inclusive society;
- how to collaborate through grant proposal writing;
- how to better support social simulation education and training;
- how to provide better support to early career researchers;
- how to better facilitate access to specialized knowledge;
- how to promote social simulation in research and decision making;
- how to facilitate engagement in the community.
Depending on the number of participants, the session will be organised as plenary discussion, break-out rooms, and/or fishbowl discussion.
11:00 – 11:15
Break
11.15 - 12:45
Strongly Empirical Modelling: Strengthening the connection between ABM and data
By Dino Carpentras (ETH Zürich, Switzerland), Bruce Edmonds (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
The scope of this session is to discuss about the empirical dimension in ABM. This will include topics such as what makes the comparison between models and data difficult, the role of abstractions and free variables, the possibility of making ABMs falsifiable, and much more. This session is organized by the newborn Social Interest Group (SIG) on Strongly Empirical Modelling.
12:45 – 13:30
Lunch break
13:30 - 15:00
ESSA@work
By Vivek Nallur (University College Dublin, Ireland), Christian Kammler (Umeå University, Sweden), Katharina Luckner (Hamburg University, Germany)
ESSA@work is a concept born out of the desire to give and receive feedback on work-in-progress agent-based models. Participants present a model they are working on to gather feedback and suggestions to improve, adapt and/or extend their model. The model can be at any stage of development, from a design to a completed model, however, it should have been at least partially explored by the author, and they should prepare questions/problems that they are struggling with in relation to the model. Feedback to participants comes from two different sources: two expert modellers and the audience. In the feedback process, emphasis is placed on constructive exploration of possible solutions to the problems raised by the participants, who are not asked to “defend” their modelling choices. Rather, they are provided with an opportunity to listen to two experts constructively discuss their work with complete involvement.
In the SocSimFesT 2024 edition there will be two participants to present and receive feedback on their work
15:00 – 15:15
Break
15:15 - 16:45
The end of Social Simulation as we know it? LLM agents and ABSS
Moderators: Harko Verhagen (Stockholm University, Sweden), Nanda Wijermans (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Now that different branches of computer science but also social sciences are claiming that “finally now one can study social interaction or processes” using Large Language Model based agents, is there a future for Social Simulation as we know it?
Have a look at what is going on via this TEDtalk or check the repository on github.
Opening discussants:
Bruce Edmonds (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Wenyue Hua (Rutgers University) – amongst others coauthor of this paper.