First IJCAI Workshop on Social Simulation July 12, 2009 http://ss-ijcai2009.di.fc.ul.pt

to be held at the Pasadena Conference Center (Pasadena CA, USA)

during the 21st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence IJCAI-09 (http://ijcai-09.org/)

Aims and Scope

Agent-based Social Simulation is a recent multi-disciplinary effort that has increasingly established new challenges for the Artificial Intelligence and Multiagent 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 MAS has come from Social Sciences, and these have benefited from more rigorous and operational concepts as well as from principled methodologies with which to face experiments with heterogeneous artificial agents.

Social Simulation brings together the multi-agent simulation (MAS) and agent-based social simulation (ABSS) 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 ABSS is on simulating and synthesizing social behaviors in order to understand real social systems (human, animal and even
electronic) 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.

General Topics

This workshop 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 workshop will focus both on ideas coming from Artificial Intelligence as a new technology to provide insights into ABSS community and the ideas coming from social sciences as new metaphors to provide insights into MAS community.

The main themes of the workshop will include:
(1) general issues (Agent and environment modeling; Standards for
simulators including inter-operability; Self-organization, scalability,
robustness in MABS; MABS applications; and Methodologies and techniques
that link MAS and ABSS works);

(2) MAS issues (Grid-computing for MABS; Visualization and analytic
tools; Managing interactions in large-scale systems; Simulation
languages and formalisms; and Complexity); and

(3) ABSS issues (Formal and agent-based models of social behavior and
social order; Social structures and norms; Cognitive modeling and social
simulation; The emergence of cooperation and coordinated action; and
Agent-based experimental economics).

Target Audience

The workshop will provide a forum for social scientists, agent researchers and developers and simulation researchers to assess the current state of the art in modeling and simulation of social systems, identify where existing approaches can be successfully applied, learn about new approaches and explore future research challenges.

Important Dates

March 6, 2009: Submission of contributions April 17, 2009: Paper acceptance notification May 8, 2009: Final camera ready copy to workshop organizer July 12, 2009: IJCAI-09 Social Simulation Workshop

Submission of papers

Papers should be written in English (US standard) in Springer LNCS format, up to a maximum of 12 pages (US Letter), and sent my e-mail to ss-ijcai2009@di.fc.ul.pt by the submission deadline date.

Review process

All submissions will go through a peer review process, with three independent PC members reviewing each submission. Only those deemed to be 1) relevant to the workshop’s aims, 2) presenting original work, and 3) of good quality and clarity would be accepted. Should there be post-proceedings, all workshop participants will be required to revise their papers which will undergo a second review process before publication.

Publication

Accepted papers will be published and distributed to participants at the workshop. The best papers will be selected for post-publication, as a special issue of an international scientific journal. The tentative schedule for the second revision process is:

August 2009: Submission for second review process September 2009: Feedback and submission of revised papers December 2009: Publication

Organizing Committee

Luis ANTUNES (GUESS/LabMAg/Univ. Lisbon, Portugal) xarax AT di.fc.ul.pt Samer HASSAN (Universidade Complutense de Madrid, Spain) samer AT fdi.ucm.es Nigel GILBERT (Dept. Sociology, University of Surrey, UK) n.gilbert AT surrey.ac.uk

Program committee

Frederic Amblard (University Toulouse 1, France) # Robert Axtell (The Brookings Institution, USA) # Joao Balsa (University of Lisbon, Portugal) # Francois Bousquet (CIRAD, France) # Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC/CNR, Italy) # Shu-Heng Chen (National Chengchi University, Taiwan) # Sung-Bae Cho (Yonsei University, Korea) # Claudio Cioffi-Revilla (George Mason University, USA) # Helder Coelho (University of Lisbon, Portugal) # Rosaria Conte (ISTC/CNR Rome, Italy) # Nuno David (ISCTE, Portugal) # Paul Davidsson (Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden) # Guillaume Deffuant (CEMAGREF, France) # Alexis Drogoul (IRD, France) # Bruce Edmonds (Centre for Policy Modelling, UK) # Andreas Flache (ICS University of Groningen, The Netherlands) # Nick Gotts (Macaulay Institute, UK) # Laszlo Gulyas (AITIA International Informatics, Hungary) # David Hales (TU Delft, The Netherlands) # Rainer Hegselmann (University of Bayreuth, Germany) # Cesareo Hernandez (University of Valladolid, Spain) # Wander Jager (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) # Marco Janssen (Arizona State University, USA) # Satoshi Kurihara (Osaka University, Japan) # Jorge Louçã (ISCTE, Portugal) # Scott Moss (Centre for Policy Modelling, UK) # Jean-Pierre Muller (CIRAD, France) # Pablo Noriega (IIIA, Spain) # Emma Norling (Centre for Policy Modelling, UK) # Michael North (Argonne National Lab and University of Chicago, USA) # Mario Paolucci (ISTC/CNR, Italy) # Simon Parsons (City University of New York, USA) # Juan Pavón (Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain) # Camille Roth (University of Toulouse, France) # Juliette Rouchier (Greqam/CNRS, France) # David Sallach (Argonne National Lab and University of Chicago, USA) # Keith Sawyer (Washington University in St. Louis, USA) # Jaime Sichman (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil) # Carles Sierra (IIIA, Spain) # Elizabeth Sklar (City University of New York, USA) # Alex Smajgl (CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia) # Liz Sonenberg (University Melbourne, Australia) # Flaminio Squazzoni (University of Brescia, Italy) # Keiki Takadama (University of Electro-Communications, Japan) # Oswaldo Teran (University of Los Andes, Venezuela) # Takao Terano (University of Tsukuba, Japan) # Pietro Terna (University of Torino, Italy) # Jan Treur (Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands) # Klaus Troitzsch (University of Koblenz, Germany) # Harko Verhagen (Stockholm University, Sweden) # Gerard Weisbuch (Ecole Normale Superieure, France)