Planning and Complexity

The new interfaculty Center for Social Complexity Studies (GCSC) at the University of Groningen has been launched this Spring. The center combines expertise on social complexity from different angles: economics & business, ecological & evolutionary studies, sociology, spatial sciences and artificial intelligence.

The key question around which the researchers from the GCSCS gather, is how interactions between individual people or animals give rise to group phenomena such as the diffusion of new behaviours, social networks, societial polarisation, crowd behaviours and spatial arrangements. Using empirical and simulation methodologies, researchers try to identify the processes that explain such phenomena, and if possible, identify managerial strategies.

Topic that are studied in the GCSCS are: Consumer behavior, market dynamics and innovation; Dynamics of social organizations; Task allocation in teams; Social network dynamics; Social structures and self-organisation in animal societies; Opinion dynamics; Social conflict and Dynamics of crowds.