Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 214, 347-360 (2012)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2012-01698-7

Regular Article

Exploratory of society

¹ International Conflict Research at ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
² National Research Council Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology, Roma, Italy
³ Risk Center, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
⁴ Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, Poland
⁵ Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
⁶ Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA & ISI foundation, Turin, Italy

Revised: 9 October 2012
Published online: 5 December 2012

Abstract

A huge flow of quantitative social, demographic and behavioral data is becoming available that traces the activities and interactions of individuals, social patterns, transportation infrastructures and travel fluxes. This has caused, together with innovative computational techniques and methods for modeling social actions in hybrid (natural and artificial) societies, a qualitative change in the ways we model socio-technical systems. For the first time, society can be studied in a comprehensive fashion that addresses social and behavioral complexity. In other words we are in the position to envision the development of large data and computational cyber infrastructure defining an exploratory of society that provides quantitative anticipatory, explanatory and scenario analysis capabilities ranging from emerging infectious disease to conflict and crime surges. The goal of the exploratory of society is to provide the basic infrastructure embedding the framework of tools and knowledge needed for the design of forecast/anticipatory/crisis management approaches to socio technical systems, supporting future decision making procedures by accelerating the scientific cycle that goes from data generation to predictions.