The European Commission is moving to fund a “‘man-on-the-moon’ scale” scientific vision, and according to an article on swissinfo.ch, SFI External Professor Dirk Helbing’s social modeling project is among the final six contenders.
Helbing and co-director Steven Bishop seek to create what they call a Living Earth Simulator that will allow scientists to observe societal function from financial, economic, and social perspectives. To build the simulator, Helbing and his collaborators would need to gather vast quantities of data from internet sources and studies of collective behavior.
Of the six projects selected to compete for the billion-Euro award, Helbing’s is the only that hails from the social sciences. Helbing says sociology could be the “starting point of new scientific revolution.” According to the article, information and communications technologies now deliver an unprecedented quantity of “hard facts” pertaining to the social sciences. In the right hands, these facts could help forecast future social trends and potential economic disasters.
Read the article (July 1, 2011)