Category: CSS

MAIS in CSS

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It is always a great pleasure to teach and work with students, and see them complete their academic program. Over this last academic year, I supervised 3 masters students and served on the committee of another one, who all successfully completed their Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) with a concentration in Computational Social Science (CSS). To quote from the MAIS in CSS website:

“Computational Social Science (CSS) is an interdisciplinary science in which social science questions are investigated with modern computational tools. Our program was the first CSS MA in the world, and continues to advance the study of social science through computational methods (e.g. agent-based modeling, social network analysis, and big data).

Our faculty members are internationally recognized for their pioneering work in CSS, including authoring the first textbook in the field, and have written numerous books and articles on topics such as growing artificial societies, modeling geographical systems, and sustainability. Research in the program is and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, United States Agency for International Development, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and NASA.

Besides taking introductory classes in theories and practices of social, geo-social, economic, and network modeling, you will have the opportunity to work one-on-one with faculty on your project or thesis of interest, as well as directed readings. Additionally, Mason’s proximity to the Washington, D.C., area provides an excellent opportunity to attend seminars offered by NGOs, visiting professors, and government employees.

Students range from recent college graduates to mid-career professionals who bring diverse knowledge that enhances the classroom experience. Graduates have gone on to pursue their doctorates at Mason and other Carnegie Classification Research 1 universities. Others have pursued or continued their career in government or the private sector, in organizations such as the U.S. Army, MapR Technologies, CACI, Logistics Management Institute, and Ninja Analytics, Inc.

To get the latest information on our program, visit us on Facebook or our program page.”

Below is a selection of projects from this academic year. Eric Hansen project was entitled “An Agent-Based Model of British And Boer Small Arms and Tactics During the Second Anglo-Boer War” in which he explored different military technology had an impact on the military victories.
In another project, Paul Cummings  explored different strategies for combating radicalism (i.e. Security Risk model and Socio-Economic Hardship model) via an agent-based model under the title of “Modeling the Characteristics of Radical Ideological Growth using an Agent based Model Methodology“

Marta Hansen’s final project was entitled “Positive Affect And Prospect Theory In Agent_Zero: A Model Extension” which extends Joshua Epstein’s Agent_Zero model to allow for cooperative events to take place.
Just to highlight that not all students opt for  agent-based models. Devin Bright undertook a project entitled “Mapping the Human Terrain of a Modern Megacity with the use of Social Media.” In which he explored how a years worth of social media data can be mined and analyzed via GIS and social network analysis (SNA) to to give insights into the dynamics of New York City in the United States and Lagos in Nigeria.
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CSS

MAIS in CSS

Posted on by
It is always a great pleasure to teach and work with students, and see them complete their academic program. Over this last academic year, I supervised 3 masters students and served on the committee of another one, who all successfully completed their Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) with a concentration in Computational Social Science (CSS). To quote from the MAIS in CSS website:

“Computational Social Science (CSS) is an interdisciplinary science in which social science questions are investigated with modern computational tools. Our program was the first CSS MA in the world, and continues to advance the study of social science through computational methods (e.g. agent-based modeling, social network analysis, and big data).

Our faculty members are internationally recognized for their pioneering work in CSS, including authoring the first textbook in the field, and have written numerous books and articles on topics such as growing artificial societies, modeling geographical systems, and sustainability. Research in the program is and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, United States Agency for International Development, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and NASA.

Besides taking introductory classes in theories and practices of social, geo-social, economic, and network modeling, you will have the opportunity to work one-on-one with faculty on your project or thesis of interest, as well as directed readings. Additionally, Mason’s proximity to the Washington, D.C., area provides an excellent opportunity to attend seminars offered by NGOs, visiting professors, and government employees.

Students range from recent college graduates to mid-career professionals who bring diverse knowledge that enhances the classroom experience. Graduates have gone on to pursue their doctorates at Mason and other Carnegie Classification Research 1 universities. Others have pursued or continued their career in government or the private sector, in organizations such as the U.S. Army, MapR Technologies, CACI, Logistics Management Institute, and Ninja Analytics, Inc.

To get the latest information on our program, visit us on Facebook or our program page.”

Below is a selection of projects from this academic year. Eric Hansen project was entitled “An Agent-Based Model of British And Boer Small Arms and Tactics During the Second Anglo-Boer War” in which he explored different military technology had an impact on the military victories.
In another project, Paul Cummings  explored different strategies for combating radicalism (i.e. Security Risk model and Socio-Economic Hardship model) via an agent-based model under the title of “Modeling the Characteristics of Radical Ideological Growth using an Agent based Model Methodology“

Marta Hansen’s final project was entitled “Positive Affect And Prospect Theory In Agent_Zero: A Model Extension” which extends Joshua Epstein’s Agent_Zero model to allow for cooperative events to take place.
Just to highlight that not all students opt for  agent-based models. Devin Bright undertook a project entitled “Mapping the Human Terrain of a Modern Megacity with the use of Social Media.” In which he explored how a years worth of social media data can be mined and analyzed via GIS and social network analysis (SNA) to to give insights into the dynamics of New York City in the United States and Lagos in Nigeria.
Continue reading »
CSS

CSS Phds and Masters 2016

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One of the great rewards with working within a university is the interaction with students and seeing them advance through their studies and carryout innovative research projects.

This last academic year the Computational Social Science Program here at Mason had a bumper crop of graduates both at the PhD and masters level.

 In the picture are newly hooded Drs Palmer, Rouly and Magallanes.
Along with the not so new Drs Axtell, Crooks and Cioffi.

Our recent PhD graduates included:

       In the picture are newly hooded Drs Scott, Russo, Masad, Dover and Shin. Along with the not so new Drs Cioffi, Crooks,  Kennedy and Mrs. Underwood.

      Along with our PhD graduates we also had a number of Masters students graduate in the MAIS with a Concentration in Computational Social Science Program. Well done to Rui Zhang, Justin Brandenburg, Matthew Oldham, Stefan McCabe, Craig Brown and Stefani Fournier.

      Continue reading »
      CSS, MASON

      CSS Phds and Masters 2016

      Posted on by

      One of the great rewards with working within a university is the interaction with students and seeing them advance through their studies and carryout innovative research projects.

      This last academic year the Computational Social Science Program here at Mason had a bumper crop of graduates both at the PhD and masters level.

       In the picture are newly hooded Drs Palmer, Rouly and Magallanes.
      Along with the not so new Drs Axtell, Crooks and Cioffi.

      Our recent PhD graduates included:

           In the picture are newly hooded Drs Scott, Russo, Masad, Dover and Shin. Along with the not so new Drs Cioffi, Crooks,  Kennedy and Mrs. Underwood.

          Along with our PhD graduates we also had a number of Masters students graduate in the MAIS with a Concentration in Computational Social Science Program. Well done to Rui Zhang, Justin Brandenburg, Matthew Oldham, Stefan McCabe, Craig Brown and Stefani Fournier.

          Continue reading »
          CSS, MASON

          GeoSocial Gauge

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          Over the last couple of months we have been working on getting our GeoSocial Gauge system up and running. The idea behind the website is to bring together social media and geographical analysis to monitor and explore people’s views, reactions, and interactions through space and time. It takes advantage of the emergence of social media to observe the human landscape as the living, breathing organism that it is: we can witness the explosion-like dissemination of information within a society, or the clusters of individuals who share common opinions or attitudes, and map the locations of these clusters. This is an unprecedented development that broadens drastically our understanding of the way that people act, react to events, and interact with each other and with their environment. We refer to this novel approach to study the integration of geography and society as GeoSocial Analysis.
          The GeoSocial Gauge has several live streams ranging from exploring the political issues (e.g. Sequester) to to see what people are tweeting about TV (The Walking Dead).

          Screen shot of GeoSocial Gauge of the Sequester. Showing the location of tweets, the most frequent words and whether or not the messages are positive (green) or negative (red).
          Screen shot of GeoSocial Gauge of The Walking Dead.

          Some of our initial work on this type of analyis can be found at:

          • Stefanidis, T., Crooks, A.T. and Radzikowski, J. (2013), Harvesting Ambient Geospatial Information from Social Media Feeds, GeoJournal, 78, (2): 319-338.
          • Crooks, A.T., Croitoru, A., Stefanidis, A. and Radzikowski, J. (2013), #Earthquake: Twitter as a Distributed Sensor System, Transactions in GIS, 17(1): 124-147.

          Continue reading »
          CSS, GeoSocial, twitter

          GeoSocial Gauge

          Posted on by

          Over the last couple of months we have been working on getting our GeoSocial Gauge system up and running. The idea behind the website is to bring together social media and geographical analysis to monitor and explore people’s views, reactions, and interactions through space and time. It takes advantage of the emergence of social media to observe the human landscape as the living, breathing organism that it is: we can witness the explosion-like dissemination of information within a society, or the clusters of individuals who share common opinions or attitudes, and map the locations of these clusters. This is an unprecedented development that broadens drastically our understanding of the way that people act, react to events, and interact with each other and with their environment. We refer to this novel approach to study the integration of geography and society as GeoSocial Analysis.
          The GeoSocial Gauge has several live streams ranging from exploring the political issues (e.g. Sequester) to to see what people are tweeting about TV (The Walking Dead).

          Screen shot of GeoSocial Gauge of the Sequester. Showing the location of tweets, the most frequent words and whether or not the messages are positive (green) or negative (red).
          Screen shot of GeoSocial Gauge of The Walking Dead.

          Some of our initial work on this type of analyis can be found at:

          • Stefanidis, T., Crooks, A.T. and Radzikowski, J. (2013), Harvesting Ambient Geospatial Information from Social Media Feeds, GeoJournal, 78, (2): 319-338.
          • Crooks, A.T., Croitoru, A., Stefanidis, A. and Radzikowski, J. (2013), #Earthquake: Twitter as a Distributed Sensor System, Transactions in GIS, 17(1): 124-147.

          Continue reading »
          CSS, GeoSocial, twitter

          New paper: Agent-based modeling for community resource management: Acequia-based agriculture

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          We have just got a paper accepted in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems entitled “Agent-based modeling for community resource management: Acequia-based agriculture.” In the paper we explore the complex social interactions of water management, which involves landowners collectively maintaining and managing ditches which distribute water among the properties.

          This system of the physical ditches and the maintaining organization together is known as an acequia, and the landowners who maintain it are called Parciantes. Acequias are interesting to researchers because of the developed common property regimes they require to function. The water carried by the ditches is a shared resource, and the complex management system of the acequia has evolved to avoid Hardin’s tragedy of the commons with regard to natural resources in the sense that it prevents the resource from being overused or under-maintained to the detriment of everyone. Ostrom has extensively studied the process of sharing such resources, investigating the structures set in place to preserve them. In ‘‘Governing the Commons’’, her book on common pool resources and human–ecosystem interactions, she suggests a set of characteristics that define stable communal social mechanisms. These characteristics include the presence of environment-appropriate rules governing the use of collective goods and the efficacy of individuals in the system.

          Below is the abstract from the paper:

          Water management is a major concern across the world. From northern China to the Middle East to Africa to the United States, growing populations can stress local water resources as they demand more water for both direct consumption and agriculture. Irrigation based agriculture draws especially heavily on these resources and usually cannot survive without them; however, irrigation systems must be maintained, a task individual agriculturalists cannot bear alone. We have constructed an agent-based model to investigate the significant interaction and cumulative impact of the physical water system, local social and institutional structures which regulate water use, and the real estate market on the sustainability of traditional farming as a lifestyle in the northern New Mexico area. The regional term for the coupled social organization and physical system of irrigation is ‘‘acequias’’. The results of the model show that depending on the future patterns of weather and government regulations, acequia-based farming may continue at near current rates, shrink significantly but continue to exist, or disappear altogether.
          In the figure below we show some of our efforts in verification of the model, specifically, the water network, after 100 years of regular maintenance (A) and after 100 years of no maintenance (B). The darker the line, the more clear the segment is of sedimentation; only unmaintained acequias are impacted by sedimentation in this model, and appear in lighter shades.

          Below is a movie are a few sample model runs showing how different scenarios play out, specifically with respect to land-use change.

          Full reference:

          Wise, S. and Crooks, A. T. (2012), Agent Based Modelling and GIS for Community Resource Management: Acequia-based Agriculture, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2012.08.004.
          Continue reading »
          ABM, CSS, GIS
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