Providing Socio-technical Complex Adaptive Systems for Better Policy Evaluation

Speaker: Andreas Tolk, Ph.D., Chief Scientist for Complex Systems Modeling, The MITRE Corporation
Faculty Host: Jian Tao, PVFA/TAMIDS
Abstract: In today’s world, technical excellence is no longer considered sufficient to address challenges in society, but social competence is equally important, as our society is increasingly perceived to be a socio-technical complex adaptive system. As such, scientists have to provide decision support that addresses the various facets of these challenges. The use of agent-based simulation has been proposed as a solution option, and recent developments in computational social science allow to enrich technical solutions with the required social components, resulting in artificial societies that place their socially capable agents in a realistic situated environment and connect them into a variety of social networks. This approach allows representing multiple value-systems and supports the multi-objective evaluation of alternative policies. To initialize these societies, a variety of heterogeneous data sources is needed. This seminar will motivate the use of artificial societies for better policy evaluation, provide some examples of successful application, and contribute to a research agenda for data science scholars and students to improve policy support further.
Biography: Dr. Andreas Tolk is a member of the Modeling and Analysis Innovation Center, which is part of the MITRE Laboratories Labs which aim to advance solutions to address cross-cutting complex challenges faced by government agencies and industry partners. Before he joined MITRE, he was Professor of Systems Engineering at Old Dominion University, where his research focused on Interoperability and Composability of model- and data driven solutions, Epistemology of Simulation, and Computational Decision Support. His research was recognized by distinguished contribution awards of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Society for Modeling and Simulation International (SCS). He published 15 textbooks and compendiums, and more than 250 book chapters, journal articles, and conference papers. He is a Fellow of SCS and senior member of ACM and IEEE. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science.
References:
- Andreas Tolk (2022): Simulation-Based Optimization: Implications of Complex Adaptive Systems and Deep Uncertainty. Information. 13: 469. DOI 10.3390/info13100469
- Marchau, Walker, Bloemen & Popper. 2019. Decision making under deep uncertainty: from theory to practice. Springer Nature.
- Andreas Tolk, Alison Harper, and Nav Mustafee (2021). Hybrid models as transdisciplinary research enablers. European Journal of Operational Research, 291(3), 1075-1090. DOI 10.1016/j.ejor.2020.10.010
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