To be held at The Sixth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2008) Estoril, Portugal, May 12-13, 2008.

AIMS AND SCOPE

The meeting of researchers from MAS engineering and the social/economic/organizational sciences is extensively recognized for its role in cross-fertilization, and has undoubtedly been an important source of inspiration for the body of knowledge that has been produced in the MAS area. Multi-Agent Based Simulation (MABS) is a vibrant inter-disciplinary area which brings together researchers within the agent-based social simulation community (ABSS) and the Multiagent Systems community (MAS). The focus of ABSS is on simulating and synthesising social behaviours in order to understand real social systems via the development and testing of new concepts. The focus of MAS is on the solution of hard engineering problems related to the construction, deployment and efficient operation of multiagent systems.

The MABS workshop series continues to pursue its goal to bring together researchers interested in MAS engineering, with researchers focused on finding efficient solutions to modelling complex social systems, in such areas as economics, management, and organizational and social sciences in general. In all of these areas, agent theories, metaphors, models, analysis, experimental designs, empirical studies, and methodological principles, all converge into simulation as a way of achieving explanations and predictions, exploring and testing of hypotheses, better designs and systems.

The range of technical issues that MABS has dealt with, and continues to deal with, is quite diverse and extensive. Relevant topics to this workshop include, but are not limited to, the following:

Simulation methodologies

- standards for MABS

- methodologies and simulation languages for MABS

- simulation platforms and tools for MABS

- visualisation and analytic tools

- approaches for large-scale simulations

- scalability and robustness in MABS

Simulation of social and economic behaviour

- formal and agent models of social behaviour

- cognitive modelling and social simulation

- game theory and simulation

- social structure: social networks and simulating organisations

- simulating social complexity (e.g. structures and norms, social order, emergence of cooperation and coordinated action, self-organisation, the micro-macro link)

Applications

- MABS in environmental modelling

- agent-based experimental economics

- participative-based simulation

- MABS and games

All of these topics are important for both the MAS community doing simulation, and for economic, social, and organisational scientists doing simulation. Without limiting the range of traditional topics addressed in this area, in this workshop we also expect to challenge the community to submit the latest results in one additional area:

MABS in education: Opportunities and challenges

Given the relatively mature stage of simulation both in MAS engineering and the social/economic sciences, the bulk of material produced for educational and pedagogical goals is becoming quite significant. On the other hand, the topic of using simulation itself for educational purposes is becoming a consolidated area, for which the agent paradigm provides obvious insights and techniques. The potential for cross-fertilization between researchers in MAS engineering and social/economic scientists may well be of significant interest, insofar as simulation provides opportunities for students to practice their theoretical knowledge. In effect, one major benefit of work with simulation is that students are able to conduct experiments with artificial agents, and gain practical experience and convey knowledge about economic/social processes, that would be difficult to isolate in natural agents.