Social science explores the relationships among individuals within societies and the forces that influence them. For this reason, it has close relationships with network science. However, the networks at play are multifold and complex. They include social, cultural and institutional networks that encompass activities playing out not only between individuals, but also at local, regional and global scales.

Future Horizons:

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5-yearhorizon

Data-collection protocols are agreed

The creation of an international forum for computational social science leads to broad agreement between academia, industry and government on the ethics of data collection and data use. This leads to greater collaboration. Grass-roots data-privacy organisations play a key role in these discussions.

10-yearhorizon

Modelling finds increasing success

Models of certain classes of techno-socio-economic-environmental phenomena become increasingly used by diverse stakeholders and civil-society initiatives to explore potential outcomes of a large variety of applications.

25-yearhorizon

Outcome-testing guides social interventions

Computational models of complex techno-socio-economic-environmental systems that simulate networks and interactions become progressively more capable. These models lead to a number of innovative approaches to manage complex dynamical systems that prove the power of the suggested approach: for example to improve sustainability and resilience, or to prevent or mitigate the spread and impact of diseases.

In recent years, increasingly powerful computational models have allowed researchers to capture many properties of these networks and to study the transitions from one type of collective behaviour to another. This has led to the emergence of the new discipline of computational social science, which aims to develop better social theories, gather more meaningful datasets in an ever-growing range of experiments and to create increasingly useful models. These models have already given us a better understanding of a wide range of phenomena, such as pedestrian and traffic flows, social inequality and the spread of diseases.¹ The hope is that this approach will help predict the feed-forward effects too, allowing stakeholders such as researchers, commercial entities and governments to collaborate on modelling the potential outcomes of alternative decisions and putting solutions into practice more successfully.

Computational social science - Anticipation Scores

The Anticipation Potential of a research field is determined by the capacity for impactful action in the present, considering possible future transformative breakthroughs in a field over a 25-year outlook. A field with a high Anticipation Potential, therefore, combines the potential range of future transformative possibilities engendered by a research area with a wide field of opportunities for action in the present. We asked researchers in the field to anticipate:

The uncertainty related to future science breakthroughs in the field
The transformative effect anticipated breakthroughs may have on research and society
The scope for action in the present in relation to anticipated breakthroughs.

This chart represents a summary of their responses to each of these elements, which when combined, provide the Anticipation Potential for the topic. See methodology for more information.