Toward Realization of Innovative Systems Approach for Societal Design: Multiscale Social Modeling and Simulation (MSMS) Methodology

Abstract

To facilitate a smarter world, an innovative systems approach that can flexibly accommodate various modes of decision-making with different spatiotemporal granularity, which is a characteristic of social systems composed of diverse stakeholders, is necessary by organically and closely integrating the cyber world and the real world. This chapter presents a new systems approach to design seamless integration among multiple social subsystems with hierarchical characteristics that constitute a social system as a promising methodology to achieve this integration. Societal simulation modeling and simulation methodology are proposed as solutions. However, existing techniques become limited when the multiscale nature of social systems must be considered. Therefore, adaptation of multiscale modeling and simulation approach for social systems is performed in this chapter. The proposed approach is evaluated using a case study of electric power system. Results of computational experiments reveal the effectiveness of multiscale social modeling and simulation for designing social systems without omitting their multiscale nature.