[agents] CFP Agent Based Simulation for a Sustainable Society @ PRIMA 2011

[Frank Dignum]

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CALL FOR PAPERS
Agent Based Simulation for a Sustainable Society
Workshop at PRIMA 2011
Wollongong, Australia 14 or 15 November 2011
ict1.tbm.tudelft.nl/absss2011/
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Important dates:
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* Paper submission: 12 August
* Acceptance notification: 16 September
* Early registration deadline: 27 September
* Camera-ready papers due: 30 September
* Registration deadline: 1 November
* Workshop date: 14 or 15 November
* PRIMA conference: 16-18 November

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Workshop Goals:
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Agent based social simulation has been around for quite some time now. 
It has been
successful in a number of areas. Policies for sustainable development 
require complex
decision about resource management, balance of economic, environmental 
and societal needs and involve many countries, interest groups and 
individuals. Especially for sustainable societies we are interested in 
simulations that can capture the behavioral patterns, changes and 
interactions in a society. This requires large scale simulations with 
relatively rich cognitive agents. Current approaches to the study of 
sustainable environments and communities focus on either individuals as 
the causal unit, particularly with regard to psychological adjustment, 
or on macro-economic aspects. Macro-models do not provide the 
instruments to evaluate a policy at the micro-level of implementation 
and are not able to handle highly dynamic or volatile situations. On the 
other hand, micro-models of individuals and groups, as used at the lower 
levels of abstraction, usually based on agent models for emergent global 
behavior, such as Agent Based Social Simulation (ABSS), don’t provide 
means to specify and regulate normative global restrictions. However, 
the societies being modeled in policy making relate to real people with 
real needs and personalities, often of a multi-cultural composition. 
Those circumstances require the agents to be diversified to accommodate 
these facts.
Many issues come up in this context and submissions are invited to 
discuss these issues, including:
* What is the influence of current norms and values of a society on the 
way it reacts to sustainability issues?
* Can we device policies that take this into account and achieve 
socially optimal
situations?
* How do we balance rich and complex agents and interactions and large 
scale
simulations?
* How can we choose the aspects that should be included in the 
simulation in order for the simulation to be useful for policy makers?
* Can we zoom in and out to particular areas in a simulation? E.g. look 
at a street level
simulation and zoom out to a nationwide simulation including that street?
* What kind of agent platforms are best suited for this kind of agent 
based simulations?

We encourage participants to submit a paper (15 pages max), describing 
their work on one or more of the topics mentioned above.
Please use the LNCS format for formatting your paper.

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Submission procedure:
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PRIMA-2011 workshops will published publish in a joint volume in the 
LNAI series,
Springer. Papers should thus be in Springer LNCS format and no more than 
15 pages in
length. They should be submitted as a PDF file and must include the 
author's name(s),
affiliation, complete mailing address and email address.
ABSSS2011 submissions will be reviewed by 3 PC members.
Submissions must be done through the Easychair system:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=absss2011
The deadline for receipt of submissions is August, 12, 2011. Papers 
received after this date will not be reviewed.

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Organizing Committee
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* Frank Dignum, Utrecht University
* Virginia Dignum, Delft University of Technology
* Liz Sonenberg, The University of Melbourne
* Yoshi Kashima, The University of Melbourne

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Program Committee:
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* Frank Dignum (Utrecht University, NL)
* Virginia Dignum (Delft University of Technology, NL)
* Bruce Edmonds (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
* Nigel Gilbert (University of Surrey, UK)
* Gertjan Hofstede (Wageningen University, NL)
* Yoshi Kashima (University of Melbourne, AUS)
* Craig Pearson (University of Melbourne, AUS)
* Jens Pfau (University of Melbourne, AUS)
* Dirk van Rooy (Australian National University, AUS)
* Alex Smajgl (CSIRO, AUS)
* Liz Sonenberg (University of Melbourne, AUS)
* Leon Sterling (Swinburne University, AUS)
* Tiberiu Stratulat (Polytech Montpellier, FR)

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Frank Dignum                         *
Utrecht University                   * Knowledge is only one point,
The Netherlands                      * the ignorant have multiplied it
e-mail: dignum at cs.uu.nl              *
webpage: www.cs.uu.nl/people/dignum/ *                   (Baha'u'llah)
telephone: +31-30-2539109            *
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