Modelling complex social systems from the bottom-up: an introduction to Agent Based Modelling

Social dynamics (e.g. innovation diffusion and adoption, public opinion, mobility and consumer behavior, etcetera) are complex processes characterized by many layers of heterogeneity: 1/ a wide variety of individual and collective actors, 2/ acting and interacting in many different ways among them and with the environment, and 3/ following various decision making rules, while being 4/ affected by and affecting the social institutional and environmental context they are embedded in.

Grasping the societal outcomes that unpredictably emerge from this complexity is challenging for traditional deterministic models. In this respect, Agent Based Modelling (ABM) provides and alternative, more evolutionary approach aimed at describing the behavior of social complex systems at the macro level, i.e. social phenomena, being the result of the behavior and interactions among the individual agents at the micro level.

This course will introduce ABM. It targets PhD students and postdocs in the social sciences who are interested in learning more about ABM, but have not yet started building an ABM. The course will outline key theoretical premises about the complexity of social systems and dynamics (that affect its modelling) and it will provide the methodological basics for their representation through agent- based micro simulation models using NETLOGO, which is the most user-friendly and on the market.

More information about the program is available below:

1/ The complexity of Social Systems: agents, environment and interaction
2/ The micro-foundation of social dynamics and the ABM approach
3/ Building ABM with NetLogo:

• getting started with
• exploring models

4/ Creating your own simulation

• Building and populating the world
• Making agents acting, deciding and learning
• Interaction and emergence
• Observing simulating processes

5/ Doing Experiments
6/ Exploring available resources (OpenABM, JASS)

Learning outcomes

After attending this winter school, participants will be able...

• to understand and represent socio-economic dynamics as complex phenomena, i.e. identifying its main components and their interactions and making hypothesis about their generative mechanisms
• to assess the strengths and weaknesses of ABM, as well as its use cases as a method
• to get familiar with the Netlogo environment and language, the most common software for building simple ABM
• to explore and modify existing ABM models
• to start building their own ABM

Competences

An important part of preparing for any further professional step is becoming (more) aware of the competences you have developed and/or want to develop. In the current workshop, the following competences from the UHasselt competency overview are actively dealt with:

• intellectual competences
  
  • conceptual/synthetic thinking
  • analytical thinking
  • problem solving
• academic research competences
  • research methods
  • data management

For whom?

• PhD students and postdocs of social sciences

When and where?

• 15 February, 2024 - 09:00-16:00
• campus Hasselt, green room

Registration?

• Registrations are closed.
• Please cancel your registration at least one week in advance in case you cannot make it (cf. cancellation & no-show policy).

Acknowledged as?

• DS BS&H: course on advanced discipline-specific knowledge