Session chairs:

Amineh Ghorbani – A.ghorbani@tudelft.nl

Christopher Frantz

Description:

Societies function on social backbones that guide individual behaviour and interaction. This social environment provides the guiding principles in the form of norms (socially enforced behaviour) and institutions (formal and informal rules) that influence how decision making entities act and interact.  At the same time, the social environment regulated by these constructs exhibits dynamics, originating from the individuals embedded therein. The intangible nature of norms and institutions makes their integrated use, let alone formalization, challenging.  Yet, their inclusion in simulations not only allows us to capture the complex essentials to study social systems (e.g. emergence of collective action), it also enables the study of the social environment itself, including norms, values and social practices. The goal of this special track is to address challenges that are related to the modelling of these concepts and to share related experiences. These challenges include: collecting data on  norms and institutions, their conceptualization, as well as verification & validation of models that incorporate these essential social concepts.