|
S4
(Spatial Simulation for the Social Sciences) is a European Research
Group created in 2006.
It aims to develop spatial dynamic modelling as an integrative tool for
understanding, discussing and helping to manage the evolution of our
complex societies. We shall focus on comparing models’
performances and enhancing their complementarities for the simulation
of spatial evolution at different scales and for a variety of
applications. Multilevel simulation models yield very useful tools for
relating interacting individual choices to their spatial consequences
and for converting complex social dynamics into easy to communicate
spatial representations. Our aim is a wide dissemination of this new
expertise nto the social sciences, as well as EU regional and local
institutions. In this new field of interdisciplinary research, Europe
has been especially innovative during the last twenty years and could
become an international scientific leader. However, closer connections
have to be established between research groups in order to put
complexity theories into practice by developing more widely applicable
operational simulation tools.
As places are both revealing and integrating a wide range of sources of
social change, from global trends to local daily interactions, space is
a very important dimension for an information society. Knowledge about
places may then help in adapting new information to a variety of local
situations. Many challenges facing European society are intimately
related to the issues of spatial structure and its transformation over
time as a result of a whole range of interacting decisions, policies
and technological innovation. Some act at the European scale, such as
the multiple changes that result from enlargement policies. Others are
perceptible at more local scales, for example, the problems of
availability of affordable housing near to jobs, the development of
areas of social exclusion and of dislocation, the mismatch between
supply and demand of public services, or the differential accessibility
of cultural, leisure and educational infrastructures for different
groups. Without the underlying ability to take into account the spatial
implications of multiple policies, decisions and technological changes,
our societies will experience considerable unnecessary stresses,
tensions and costs. The objective of the Network S4 would be to help
provide a dynamic, multi-scalar, spatial modelling capacity that could
be used to anticipate the changing patterns of opportunity, stress and
need that would result from emerging private and public initiatives
concerning economic, residential, and infrastructural developments.
Spatial simulation models are a way of linking together a variety of
interacting social and physical processes and to discuss their possible
reciprocal effects, under sets of different hypotheses explicitly
enunciated with responsible actors. Very complex socio-spatial dynamics
can be presented on simple maps through different scenarios. We want to
help public institutions to gain a much better knowledge of the
objectives, preferences, trade-offs of the citizens (the "users" of the
territory), and their decision-making processes, which determine
spatial self-organisation and the reactions of the spatial system to
plans and intervention. This will enable them to reliably compare sound
and transparent scenarios of evolution, and to debate and make choices
on the basis of well founded and structured knowledge.
|
