This page lists some of the Web sites that provide information about social simulation and related topics. The Web is constantly changing and so some of the addresses shown below may have gone and others come. Nevertheless, this list provides a good starting point for exploration.

General

Copies of most of the program code included in this book can be found at http://cress.soc.surrey.ac.uk/s4ss/

There is an e-mail distribution list for simulation in the social sciences. To subscribe, fill in your details at the subscription page, http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/simsoc.html

Programs, packages and languages

MIMOSE

MIMOSE consists of a model description language and an experimental framework for the simulation of models. The main purpose of the MIMOSE project has been the development of a modelling language that considers the special demands of modelling in social science, especially the description of nonlinear quantitative and qualitative relations, stochastic influences, birth and death processes, and micro and multilevel models. The aim is that describing models in MIMOSE should not burden the modeller with a lot of programming and implementation details.

MIMOSE was created by Michael Möhring of Computer Science Applications in the Social Sciences, Department of Computer Science, University of Koblenz-Landau, Rheinau 1, D-56075 Koblenz, Germany.

Release 2.0 requires Sun Sparc (SunOS, Solaris, X11R5/6 or LINUX. A Java interface is under development and the next release will be usable with Java-enabled browsers. The current release is usable with Java-enabled browsers, given that the server process runs on a SunOS or LINUX machine.

NetLogo

NetLogo is a programmable modelling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena. It is particularly well suited for modelling complex systems developing over time. Modellers can give instructions to hundreds or thousands of independent `agents' all operating concurrently. This makes it possible to explore the connection between the micro-level behaviour of individuals and the macro-level patterns that emerge from the interaction of many individuals.

NetLogo lets students open simulations and `play' with them, exploring their behaviour under various conditions. It is also an authoring environment that enables students, teachers and curriculum developers to create their own models. NetLogo is simple enough that students and teachers can easily run simulations or even build their own. It is advanced enough to serve as a powerful tool for researchers in many fields.

NetLogo has extensive documentation and tutorials. It also comes with a models library, which is a large collection of pre-written simulations that can be used and modified. These simulations address many content areas in the natural and social sciences, including biology and medicine, physics and chemistry, mathematics and computer science, and economics and social psychology. Several model-based inquiry curricula using NetLogo are currently under development.

Swarm

Swarm is a software package for multi-agent simulation of complex systems developed at the Santa Fe Institute. It is intended to be a useful tool for researchers in a variety of disciplines, especially artificial life. The basic architecture of Swarm is the simulation of collections of concurrently interacting agents: with this architecture, a large variety of agent-based models can be implemented. It runs on UNIX machines with GNU Objective C and X-windows: the source code is freely available under GNU licensing terms; more recent versions use Java and also run on Windows machines.

Swarm is available for download in both source and binary versions.

RePast

RePast is a free software framework for creating agent-based simulations using the Java language (requires version Java 1.4 or greater). It provides a library of classes for creating, running, displaying and collecting data from an agent-based simulation. In addition, RePast can take snapshots of running simulations, and create quicktime movies of simulations. RePast borrows much from the Swarm simulation toolkit and can properly be termed `Swarm-like'. In addition, RePast includes such features as run-time model manipulation via graphical user interface widgets.

MASON

MASON is a free, fast discrete-event multi-agent simulation library core in Java, designed to be the foundation for large custom-purpose Java simulations, and also to provide functionality for many lightweight simulation needs. MASON contains both a model library and an optional suite of visualization tools in 2D and 3D.

SDML

SDML is a strictly declarative modelling language with object-oriented features specifically designed for modelling tasks in the social sciences. It enables the building of sophisticated simulations involving agents, compound agents, multiple time levels, complex organizations and so on. Its declarative logic-based style of programming allows for complete rigour as well as for the capturing of a mixture of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects. Although it has a sharp learning curve, once learnt, sophisticated models of interacting organizations and cognitive agents can be swiftly developed. For further information contact the Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University. Written by Steve Wallis, original version by Scott Moss.

SDML is available for UNIX, PC (Windows 3.11 or 95) or Macintosh, and requires 32 Mb of RAM. Commercial users also require Digitalk/Parcplace Visual Works, but academic researchers can obtain a version free from the Centre for Policy Modelling.

Simpack

Although Simpack is not specifically oriented towards social simulation, it supports a wide variety of event scheduling and continuous-time simulation models.

MAGSY

MAGSY is a development platform for multi-agent applications. Each agent in MAGSY has a forward chaining rule interpreter in its kernel. This rule interpreter is a complete re-implementation of an OPS5 system, further enhanced to make it more suitable for the development of multi-agent system applications. MAGSY runs on UNIX, LINUX, SunOS and Solaris systems.

Cormas

Cormas is a programming environment dedicated to the creation of multi-agent systems, specifically for the domain of natural-resources management. It provides a framework for developing simulation models of coordination modes between individuals and groups that jointly exploit common resources. It is written in the programming language Smalltalk.

MadKit

MadKit is a Java multi-agent platform built upon an organizational model. It provides general agent facilities, such as lifecycle management, message passing and distribution, and allows high heterogeneity in agent architectures and communication languages, and various customizations. MadKit communication is based on a peer-to-peer mechanism which allows developers to develop distributed applications quickly using agent principles. MadKit is free and licensed under the GPL/LGPL licence.

Electronic journals

There are several electronic journals which publish papers relating to computer simulation available on the Web. The most relevant of these is the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, at http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html

Others worthy of mention are:

• Complexity International (http://journal-ci.csse.monash.edu.au/ci/info-journal.html), an electronic refereed journal including a wide range of papers on complexity theory;
• Complexity Digest (http://www.comdig.org/), a weekly newsletter about complexity in the natural and social sciences, which includes links to relevant reviews, notices of articles, conference announcements and so forth;
• Artificial Life Online (http://www.alife.org/), the online companion to the (paper) journal Artificial Life, published by the Santa Fe Institute (http://www.santafe.edu/).

System dynamics

Stella

This is the site for the Stella simulation package, one of the best-known packages for scientists, and for ithink, a version aimed at business use.

Desert Island Dynamics: An Annotated Survey of the Essential System Dynamics Literature

This 1992 survey of the English-language system dynamics literature by M. Anjali Sastry and John D. Sterman identifies and summarizes some of the papers, books, games and software programs that have most influenced the development of the field.

The System Dynamics Society

The System Dynamics Society is an international, non-profit organization devoted to encouraging the development and use of system dynamics around the world.

Gene Bellinger's Systems Page

This site has information on a variety of systems-based topics.

Powersim

This is the home of the Powersim package; it has an example of system dynamics applied to the UK Newbury Bypass traffic scheme.

Institute of Robotics and System Dynamics

The Institute of Robotics and System Dynamics is part of the German Aerospace Research Establishment.

London Business School System Dynamics Group

This group works on topics involving system dynamics, systems thinking and strategic modelling.

'Violating an Occupational Sex-Stereotype: Israeli Women Earning Engineering Degrees'

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/socresonline/1/4/3.html

This is a paper in Sociological Research Online by Chanoch Jacobsen and Tamar Vanki on applying system dynamics to a sociological issue.

Microsimulation

Cambridge Microsimulation Unit

The Cambridge Microsimulation Unit is part of the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Cambridge and carries out a range of social and economic policy work using microsimulation.

Cornell Microsimulation

This is the home of CORSIM, a dynamic microsimulation model based at Cornell University.

The National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, Canberra, Australia

NATSEM maintains an extensive microsimulation site.

Euromod

EUROMOD is a 15-country Europe-wide benefit-tax model. It involves a team of researchers from all of the 15 states that formed the European Union until May 2004.

EUROMOD provides estimates of the distributional impact of changes to personal tax and transfer policy, with (a) the specification of policy changes, (b) the application of revenue constraints and (c) the evaluation of results each taking place at either the national or the European level. Thus EUROMOD is of value both in assessing the consequences of consolidated social policies and in understanding how different policies in different countries may contribute to common objectives.

Microsimulation and Econometrics at the Institute of Fiscal Studies

The Institute of Fiscal Studies in London uses microsimulation for some of its policy research.

Statistics Canada Microsimulation Models

For over a decade Canada's national statistical agency has developed static models (SPSD/M), dynamic models (LifePaths) and a general simulation language (ModGen) for social policy, tax policy and other applications.

Dynamic Microsimulation of Elders' Health and Well-Being

From the Center for Demography and Economics of Aging at Syracuse University.

ASPEN: MP Microsimulation Model of the United States Economy

ASPEN was a project to develop an agent-based microsimulation model of the United States economy on the massively parallel Intel Paragon computer.

TRANSIMS

This page is about the US TRansportation ANalysis SIMulation System.

Program for Improved Vehicle Demand Forecasting Models

The aim of this project is to develop a microsimulation model system for traffic loads.

Queuing models

Details of a number of discrete event simulation modelling packages are available on the Web. In some cases, the Web sites also offer demonstrations and tutorials about the packages.

Stella

This is the site for the Stella simulation package, one of the best-known packages for scientists, and for ithink, a version aimed at business use.

SimScript

A description of the SimScript II simulation programming language and development environment can be found here. This site also describes Simprocess, which is a related simulation tool with a graphical user interface.

Simplex 3

This is the home page for Simplex3, an object-oriented modelling tool for discrete event simulation. Simplex3 is available free from this site.

emPlant

emPlant, successor to SIMPLE++, is designed for the planning of manufacturing plants and production processes by means of simulation. It includes a scalable factory model and features for the construction of a graphical user interface.

Extend

This is an extensible simulator with a sophisticated user interface.

Cellular automata

Open Directory

A good starting place for further information on cellular automata is the Open Directory, a voluntary effort to create a directory of the Web.

Modern Cellular Automata

This page has many examples of CAs and offers a Java applet that can be embedded in a Web page to produce many more variations.

DDLab

DDLab is an interactive graphics program for researching discrete dynamical networks, relevant to the study of complexity, emergent phenomena, neural networks, and aspects of theoretical biology such as gene regulatory networks. A network can be set up with any architecture from cellular autamata (CA) to `random Boolean networks' (RBN, networks with arbitrary connections and heterogeneous rules). Network dimensions may be 1d, 2d or 3d. The network may also have heterogeneous neighbourhood sizes.

Stephen Wolfram's collected papers on cellular automata

Wolfram has provided an extensive set of pages on cellular automata and their uses.

Multi-agent systems

Agent-Based Computational Economics: Growing Economies from the Bottom Up

This site has a comprehensive bibliography and links to everything to do with computational economics and social simulation, and is especially good on links to multi-agent simulations. It also includes a tutorial on agent-based computational economics.

Intelligent software agents

Sverker Janson has a page on the Swedish Institute of Computer Science site with a huge number of agent-based links.

Multi-agent systems

This site contains pointers to information about multi-agent systems, including both research and industrial references.

Neural networks

Neural Networks Warehouse

A comprehensive site with links to books, tutorials, software and descriptions of applications.

Artificial Neural Networks tutorial

A tutorial with a short bibliography.

Neural Java

Neural Java is a series of exercises and demonstrations. Each exercise consists of a short introduction, a small demonstration program written in Java as an Applet, and a series of questions which are intended as an invitation to play with the programs and explore the possibilities of different algorithms.

Evolutionary computation

EVOWEB

The website of EvoNet, the European Network of Excellence in Evolutionary Computing. It includes many tutorial resources.

The Genetic Algorithms Archive

This site provides a good set of genetic algorithm resources, including archives of the GA discussion list and source code.

Genetic Programming

This is a guide to genetic algorithms and genetic programming, with many links.

Introduction to Genetic Algorithms

These pages introduce some of the fundamentals of genetics algorithms. Several interactive Java applets have been included to demonstrate basic concepts of genetic algorithms.

Email lists

There are several mailing lists for news about conferences, books and events related to evolutionary computing. Sign up at:

http://ec-digest.research.ucf.edu

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/evolutionary-computing.html

http://www.genetic-programming.org/gpmailinglist.html