The European Social Simulation Association is a scientific society aimed at promoting the development of social simulation research, education and application in Europe. It has over 350 members from several European countries. The association organizes a European conference every two years, and — in joint action with the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas and the Pacific Asian Association for Agent-based Approach in Social Systems Sciences — a World Congress on Social Simulation every other year.
History
The European Social Simulation Association was founded in 2003 on the basis of a manifesto signed by many social simulation researchers. These founding members also drafted a constitution which forms the basis of ESSA's constitution. ESSA grew up fast, now it counts about 370 members, who elect their President and the Management Committee members every two years. So far, six Presidents have been taking turns, Scott Moss, Nigel Gilbert, Wander Jager, Rosaria Conte, Andreas Ernst and Flaminio Squazzoni. The ESSA initial community, however, is active since at least 1992, when the first of a series of symposia on Sim Soc was organized by Nigel Gilbert at the University of Surrey, in Surrey, UK. The same community gave rise to several initiatives including the SimSoc network on the Internet. In 1998, some of the later founders joined in a consortium, the main purpose of which at that time was the editing of a new scientific journal, JASSS. JASSS is now the main forum for scientific publications in the field of agent-based social simulation. The following events — the two Conferences on Computer Simulation and the Social Sciences held respectively in 1997 and in 2000 — which were also organized from within the European community rose up to a more international level. They set the ground for the series of World Congress on Social Simulation, which started in Tokyo in 2001. At the same time, a series of workshops on Multi Agent Based Simulation was launched at the 3rd ICMAS conference in 1998, bridging the social simulation to the MAS community. This and the Special Interest Group on Agent Based Social Simulation, which was active during the European Network of Excellence AgentLink I and II within the fourth and fifth frameworks of the European projects, greatly contributed to consolidate both the interdisciplinary and the international dimension of the field. From 2003 to 2009, ESSA conferences has been organized on a yearly base. Since 2010, ESSA Conferences take place every second year, alternating with WCSS.
Association's goals
ESSA's objectives are to:
Encourage the development of social simulation in Europe and more widely.
Promote international cooperation among those working in the field while recognizing the distinctiveness of European social simulation research.
Promote and support the development of European post-graduate courses and qualifications in social simulation.
Liaise with other groups.
Support and organize regular regional and international conferences.
Main topics of interest
As is exemplified by the ESSA Special Interest Groups, the community is mainly focused on market dynamics, policy, social conflict and social simulation, societal transitions. Three main typologies of simulation models have been developed so far within the European community. First, simulation studies of stylised social scenarios have been carried out for the purpose of abstract theoretical modelling, e.g.:
