Emergency evacuation (egress) is considered one of the most important issues in the design of buildings and public facilities. Given the complexity and variability in an evacuation situation, computational simulation tool is often used to help assess the performance of an egress design. Studies have revealed that social behaviors can have significant influence on the evacuating crowd during an ...

There is a growing belief that the agents' cognitive structures play a central role on the enhancement of predicative capacities of decision-making strategies. This paper analyses and simulates the construction of cognitive social structures in the process of decision making with multiple actors. In this process it is argued that the agent's rational choices may be assessed by its motivations, ...

How can we understand the interaction between the social network topology of a population and the patterns of group affiliation in that population? Each aspect influences the other: social networks provide the conduits via which groups recruit new members and groups provide the context in which new social ties are formed. Given that the resources of individuals are finite, groups can be conside...

This article suggests to view peer review as a social interaction problem and shows reasons for social simulators to investigate it. Although essential for science, peer review is largely understudied and current attempts to reform it are not supported by scientific evidence. We suggest that there is room for social simulation to fill this gap by spotlighting social mechanisms behind peer revie...

In this chapter the relationships between cognitive agents’ architecture and social phenomena produced by their behavior are discussed. What is needed in an agent’s architecture designed for MAS, social theory, and a non reductive social simulation (Sun, 2001)? Which are the peculiar features of Social Structures as they emerge among cognitive agents? Which are the needed mental representations...

This paper discusses the design and development of software tools for simulation of social networks. It is well known that social networks have become the object of attention of sociologists, political scientists, marketers, etc. The paper identifies two trends in the investigation of social networks: static and dynamic. Static approach involves the study of geometric forms of social networking...

Most agent-based simulation toolkits are based on the Java programming language. This makes their use difficult for social scientists, who are usually not skilled in computer programming. However, agent modelling concepts are not unlike those which could be used for the modelling of social systems. This assumption is considered in proposing the use of a graphical agent-oriented language for the...