Agent-based Modelling for Simulating Social Systems

How do political polarisation, social fads, or financial bubbles arise? How can the decisions of individuals lead to major societal change? In this course, students use agent-based social simulation (ABSS) to explore and understand complex social systems. These are characterised by individuals acting, cooperating, and competing, which can lead to unexpected outcomes.<br> By modelling human cognition and behaviour, students simulate interactions among individuals such as voters, consumers, or users in social networks and analyse how patterns emerge at the societal level.<br> The course combines theory and practice with examples from social influence, synthetic populations and demography, epidemics, economics, and social networks. Students learn how to design, implement, document, and analyse simulation models. The course is aimed at students in engineering and social sciences interested in advanced, data-driven approaches to understanding and shaping society.