Social simulation can be a difficult discipline to encompass fully. There are many methods, models, directions, and theories that can be discussed and applied to various social sciences. Anthropology, sociology, political science, economy, government, and management can all benefit from social simulation. Interdisciplinary Applications of Agent-Based Social Simulation and Modeling aims to bring a different perspective to this interdisciplinary topic. This book presents current discussions and new insights on social simulation as a whole, focusing on its dangers, pitfalls, deceits, and challenges. This book is an essential reference for researchers in this field, professionals using social simulation, and even students studying this discipline.

This book introduces the reader to a new method of data assimilation with deterministic constraints (exact satisfaction of dynamic constraints)-an optimal assimilation strategy called Forecast Sensitivity Method (FSM), as an alternative to the well-known four-dimensional variational (4D-Var) data assimilation method. 4D-Var works with a forward in time prediction model and a backward in time tangent linear model (TLM). The equivalence of data assimilation via 4D-Var and FSM is proven and problems using low-order dynamics clarify the process of data assimilation by the two methods. The problem of return flow over the Gulf of Mexico that includes upper-air observations and realistic dynamical constraints gives the reader a good idea of how the FSM can be implemented in a real-world situation.

In this collection of 16 articles, top scholars synthesize and analyze scholarship on this widely used tool of policy analysis, setting forth its accomplishments, difficulties, and means of implementation. Though CGE modeling does not play a prominent role in top US graduate schools, it is employed universally in the development of economic policy. This collection is particularly important because it presents a history of modeling applications and examines competing points of view.
Presents coherent summaries of CGE theories that inform major model types Covers the construction of CGE databases, model solving, and computer-assisted interpretation of results Shows how CGE modeling has made a contribution to economic policy

This book is a collection of selected papers presented at the 10th International Conference on Scientific Computing in Electrical Engineering (SCEE), held in Wuppertal, Germany in 2014. The book is divided into five parts, reflecting the main directions of SCEE 2014: 1. Device Modeling, Electric Circuits and Simulation, 2. Computational Electromagnetics, 3. Coupled Problems, 4. Model Order Reduction, and 5. Uncertainty Quantification. Each part starts with a general introduction followed by the actual papers. The aim of the SCEE 2014 conference was to bring together scientists from academia and industry, mathematicians, electrical engineers, computer scientists, and physicists, with the goal of fostering intensive discussions on industrially relevant mathematical problems, with an emphasis on the modeling and numerical simulation of electronic circuits and devices, electromagnetic fields, and coupled problems. The methodological focus was on model order reduction and uncertainty quantification.

Interest in the area of control of systems defined by partial differential Equations has increased strongly in recent years. A major reason has been the requirement of these systems for sensible continuum mechanical modelling and optimization or control techniques which account for typical physical phenomena. Particular examples of problems on which substantial progress has been made are the control and stabilization of mechatronic structures, the control of growth of thin films and crystals, the control of Laser and semi-conductor devices, and shape optimization problems for turbomachine blades, shells, smart materials and microdiffractive optics. This volume contains original articles by world reknowned experts in the fields of optimal control of partial differential equations, shape optimization, numerical methods for partial differential equations and fluid dynamics, all of whom have contributed to the analysis and solution of many of the problems discussed. The collection provides a state-of-the-art overview of the most challenging and exciting recent developments in the field. It is geared towards postgraduate students and researchers dealing with the theoretical and practical aspects of a wide variety of high technology problems in applied mathematics, fluid control, optimal design, and computer modelling.

Numerical partial differential equations (PDEs) are an important part of numerical simulation, the third component of the modern methodology for science and engineering, besides the traditional theory and experiment. This volume contains papers that originated with the collaborative research of the teams that participated in the IMA Workshop for Women in Applied Mathematics: Numerical Partial Differential Equations and Scientific Computing in August 2014.

This monograph presents urban simulation methods that help in better understanding urban dynamics. Over historical times, cities have progressively absorbed a larger part of human population and will concentrate three quarters of humankind before the end of the century. This "urban transition" that has totally transformed the way we inhabit the planet is globally understood in its socio-economic rationales but is less frequently questioned as a spatio-temporal process. However, the cities, because they are intrinsically linked in a game of competition for resources and development, self organize in "systems of cities" where their future becomes more and more interdependent. The high frequency and intensity of interactions between cities explain that urban systems all over the world exhibit large similarities in their hierarchical and functional structure and rather regular dynamics. They are complex systems whose emergence, structure and further evolution are widely governed by the multiple kinds of interaction that link the various actors and institutions investing in cities their efforts, capital, knowledge and intelligence. Simulation models that reconstruct this dynamics may help in better understanding it and exploring future plausible evolutions of urban systems. This would provide better insight about how societies can manage the ecological transition at local, regional and global scales. The author has developed a series of instruments that greatly improve the techniques of validation for such models of social sciences that can be submitted to many applications in a variety of geographical situations. Examples are given for several BRICS countries, Europe and United States. The target audience primarily comprises research experts in the field of urban dynamics, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

Recent decades have seen a very rapid success in developing numerical methods based on explicit control over approximation errors. It may be said that nowadays a new direction is forming in numerical analysis, the main goal of which is to develop methods ofreliable computations. In general, a reliable numerical method must solve two basic problems: (a) generate a sequence of approximations that converges to a solution and (b) verify the accuracy of these approximations. A computer code for such a method must consist of two respective blocks: solver and checker.
In this book, we are chiefly concerned with the problem (b) and try to present the main approaches developed for a posteriori error estimation in various problems.
The authors try to retain a rigorous mathematical style, however, proofs are constructive whenever possible and additional mathematical knowledge is presented when necessary. The book contains a number of new mathematical results and lists a posteriori error estimation methods that have been developed in the very recent time.
- computable bounds of approximation errors
- checking algorithms
- iteration processes
- finite element methods
- elliptic type problems
- nonlinear variational problems
- variational inequalities

This book describes the operation and analysis of soft-commutated isolated DC-DC converters used in the design of high efficiency and high power density equipment. It explains the basic principles behind first- and second-order circuits with power switches to enable readers to understand the importance of these converters in high efficiency and high power density power supply design for residential, commercial, industrial and medical use as well as in aerospace equipment. With each chapter featuring a different power converter topology, the book covers the most important resonant converters, including series resonant converters; resonant LLC converters; soft commutation pulse width modulation converters; zero voltage switching; and zero current switching. Each topic is presented with full analysis, a showcase of the power stages of the converters, exercises and their solutions as well as simulation results, which mainly focus on the commutation analysis and output characteristic. This book is a valuable source of information for professionals working in power electronics, power conversion and design of high efficiency and high power density DC-DC converters and switch mode power supplies. The book also serves as a point of reference for engineers responsible for development projects and equipment in companies and research centers and a text for advanced students.

This book presents a proposal for designing business process management (BPM) systems that comprise much more than just process modelling. Based on a purified Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) variant, the authors present proposals for several important issues in BPM that have not been adequately considered in the BPMN 2.0 standard. It focusses on modality as well as actor and user interaction modelling and offers an enhanced communication concept. In order to render models executable, the semantics of the modelling language needs to be described rigorously enough to prevent deviating interpretations by different tools. For this reason, the semantics of the necessary concepts introduced in this book are defined using the Abstract State Machine (ASM) method. Finally, the authors show how the different parts of the model fit together using a simple example process, and introduce the enhanced Process Platform (eP2) architecture, which binds all the different components together. The resulting method is named Hagenberg Business Process Modelling (H-BPM) after the Austrian village where it was designed. The motivation for the development of the H-BPM method stems from several industrial projects in which business analysts and software developers struggled with redundancies and inconsistencies in system documentation due to missing integration. The book is aimed at researchers in business process management and industry 4.0 as well as advanced professionals in these areas.

This book reports on cutting-edge modeling techniques, methodologies and tools used to understand, design and engineer nanoscale communication systems, such as molecular communication systems. Moreover, it includes introductory materials for those who are new to the field. The book's interdisciplinary approach, which merges perspectives in computer science, the biological sciences and nanotechnology, will appeal to graduate students and researchers in these three areas.The book is organized into five parts, the first of which describes the fundamentals of molecular communication, including basic concepts, models and designs. In turn, the second part examines specific types of molecular communication found in biological systems, such as neuronal communication in the brain. The book continues by exploring further types of nanoscale communication, such as fluorescence resonance energy transfer and electromagnetic-based nanoscale communication, in the third part, and by describing nanomaterials and structures for practical applications in the fourth. Lastly, the book presents nanomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery and biomolecular sensing.

This unique volume introduces and discusses the methods of validating computer simulations in scientific research. The core concepts, strategies, and techniques of validation are explained by an international team of pre-eminent authorities, drawing on expertise from various fields ranging from engineering and the physical sciences to the social sciences and history. The work also offers new and original philosophical perspectives on the validation of simulations. Topics and features: introduces the fundamental concepts and principles related to the validation of computer simulations, and examines philosophical frameworks for thinking about validation; provides an overview of the various strategies and techniques available for validating simulations, as well as the preparatory steps that have to be taken prior to validation; describes commonly used reference points and mathematical frameworks applicable to simulation validation; reviews the legal prescriptions, and the administrative and procedural activities related to simulation validation; presents examples of best practice that demonstrate how methods of validation are applied in various disciplines and with different types of simulation models; covers important practical challenges faced by simulation scientists when applying validation methods and techniques; offers a selection of general philosophical reflections that explore the significance of validation from a broader perspective. This truly interdisciplinary handbook will appeal to a broad audience, from professional scientists spanning all natural and social sciences, to young scholars new to research with computer simulations. Philosophers of science, and methodologists seeking to increase their understanding of simulation validation, will also find much to benefit from in the text.

This handbook serves as a comprehensive, systematic reference to the major mathematical models used in radio engineering and communications, and presents computer simulation algorithms to help the reader estimate parameters of radio systems. It provides the technical details necessary to design and analyze radar, communication, radio navigation, radio control, electronic intelligence and electronic warfare systems. Mathcad routines, cited in the handbook, should help the reader to optimize radar system performance analysis, and can be used to create custom-made software that better answers specific needs.

A state-of-the-art guide for the implementation of distributed simulation technology.

The rapid expansion of the Internet and commodity parallel computers has made parallel and distributed simulation (PADS) a hot technology indeed. Applications abound not only in the analysis of complex systems such as transportation or the next-generation Internet, but also in computer-generated virtual worlds for military and professional training, interactive computer games, and the entertainment industry.

In this book, PADS expert Richard M. Fujimoto provides software developers with cutting-edge techniques for speeding up the execution of simulations across multiple processors and dealing with data distribution over wide area networks ,including the Internet. With an emphasis on parallel and distributed discrete event simulation technologies, Dr. Fujimoto compiles and consolidates research results in the field spanning the last twenty years, discussing the use of parallel and distributed computers in both the modeling and analysis of system behavior and the creation of distributed virtual environments.

While other books on PADS concentrate on applications, Parallel and Distributed Simulation Systems clearly shows how to implement the technology. It explains in detail the synchronization algorithms needed to properly realize the simulations, including an in-depth discussion of time warp and advanced optimistic techniques. Finally, the book is richly supplemented with references, tables and illustrations, and examples of contemporary systems such as the Department of Defense's High Level Architecture (HLA), which has become the standard architecture for defense programs in the United States.

This prizewinning PhD thesis presents a general discussion of the orbital motion close to solar system small bodies (SSSBs), which induce non-central asymmetric gravitational fields in their neighborhoods. It introduces the methods of qualitative theory in nonlinear dynamics to the study of local/global behaviors around SSSBs. Detailed mechanical models are employed throughout this dissertation, and specific numeric techniques are developed to compensate for the difficulties of directly analyzing. Applying this method, several target systems, like asteroid 216 Kleopatra, are explored in great detail, and the results prove to be both revealing and pervasive for a large group of SSSBs.

This book presents selected papers from the 3rd International Workshop on Computational Engineering held in Stuttgart from October 6 to 10, 2014, bringing together innovative contributions from related fields with computer science and mathematics as an important technical basis among others. The workshop discussed the state of the art and the further evolution of numerical techniques for simulation in engineering and science. We focus on current trends in numerical simulation in science and engineering, new requirements arising from rapidly increasing parallelism in computer architectures, and novel mathematical approaches. Accordingly, the chapters of the book particularly focus on parallel algorithms and performance optimization, coupled systems, and complex applications and optimization.

This book introduces readers to MesoBioNano (MBN) Explorer - a multi-purpose software package designed to model molecular systems at various levels of size and complexity. In addition, it presents a specially designed multi-task toolkit and interface - the MBN Studio - which enables the set-up of input files, controls the simulations, and supports the subsequent visualization and analysis of the results obtained. The book subsequently provides a systematic description of the capabilities of this universal and powerful software package within the framework of computational molecular science, and guides readers through its applications in numerous areas of research in bio- and chemical physics and material science - ranging from the nano- to the mesoscale. MBN Explorer is particularly suited to computing the system's energy, to optimizing molecular structure, and to exploring the various facets of molecular and random walk dynamics. The package allows the use of a broad variety of interatomic potentials and can, e.g., be configured to select any subset of a molecular system as rigid fragments, whenever a significant reduction in the number of dynamical degrees of freedom is required for computational practicalities. MBN Studio enables users to easily construct initial geometries for the molecular, liquid, crystalline, gaseous and hybrid systems that serve as input for the subsequent simulations of their physical and chemical properties using MBN Explorer. Despite its universality, the computational efficiency of MBN Explorer is comparable to that of other, more specialized software packages, making it a viable multi-purpose alternative for the computational modeling of complex molecular systems. A number of detailed case studies presented in the second part of this book demonstrate MBN Explorer's usefulness and efficiency in the fields of atomic clusters and nanoparticles, biomolecular systems, nanostructured materials, composite materials and hybrid systems, crystals, liquids and gases, as well as in providing modeling support for novel and emerging technologies. Last but not least, with the release of the 3rd edition of MBN Explorer in spring 2017, a free trial version will be available from the MBN Research Center website (mbnresearch.com).

This book captures the current challenges in automatic recognition of emotion in spontaneous speech and makes an effort to explain, elaborate, and propose possible solutions. Intelligent human-computer interaction (iHCI) systems thrive on several technologies like automatic speech recognition (ASR); speaker identification; language identification; image and video recognition; affect/mood/emotion analysis; and recognition, to name a few. Given the importance of spontaneity in any human-machine conversational speech, reliable recognition of emotion from naturally spoken spontaneous speech is crucial. While emotions, when explicitly demonstrated by an actor, are easy for a machine to recognize, the same is not true in the case of day-to-day, naturally spoken spontaneous speech. The book explores several reasons behind this, but one of the main reasons for this is that people, especially non-actors, do not explicitly demonstrate their emotion when they speak, thus making it difficult for machines to distinguish one emotion from another that is embedded in their spoken speech. This short book, based on some of authors' previously published books, in the area of audio emotion analysis, identifies the practical challenges in analysing emotions in spontaneous speech and puts forward several possible solutions that can assist in robustly determining the emotions expressed in spontaneous speech.

This book reports on an in-depth study of fuzzy time series (FTS) modeling. It reviews and summarizes previous research work in FTS modeling and also provides a brief introduction to other soft-computing techniques, such as artificial neural networks (ANNs), rough sets (RS) and evolutionary computing (EC), focusing on how these techniques can be integrated into different phases of the FTS modeling approach. In particular, the book describes novel methods resulting from the hybridization of FTS modeling approaches with neural networks and particle swarm optimization. It also demonstrates how a new ANN-based model can be successfully applied in the context of predicting Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Thanks to its easy-to-read style and the clear explanations of the models, the book can be used as a concise yet comprehensive reference guide to fuzzy time series modeling, and will be valuable not only for graduate students, but also for researchers and professionals working for academic, business and government organizations.

Computational modeling allows to reduce, refine and replace animal experimentation as well as to translate findings obtained in these experiments to the human background. However these biomedical problems are inherently complex with a myriad of influencing factors, which strongly complicates the model building and validation process. This book wants to address four main issues related to the building and validation of computational models of biomedical processes: 1. Modeling establishment under uncertainty 2. Model selection and parameter fitting 3. Sensitivity analysis and model adaptation 4. Model predictions under uncertainty In each of the abovementioned areas, the book discusses a number of key-techniques by means of a general theoretical description followed by one or more practical examples. This book is intended for graduate students and researchers active in the field of computational modeling of biomedical processes who seek to acquaint themselves with the different ways in which to study the parameter space of their model as well as its overall behavior.

Many breakthroughs in experimental devices, advanced software, as well as analytical methods for systems biology development have helped shape the way we study DNA, RNA and proteins, on the genomic, transcriptional, translational and posttranslational level. This book highlights the comprehensive topics that encompass systems biology with enormous progress in the development of genome sequencing, proteomic and metabolomic methods in designing and understanding biological systems. Topics covered in this book include fundamentals of modelling networks, circuits and pathways, spatial and multi cellular systems, image-driven systems biology, evolution, noise and decision-making in single cells, systems biology of disease and immunology, and personalized medicine. Special attention is paid to epigenomics, in particular environmental conditions that impact genetic background. The breadth of exciting new data towards discovering fundamental principles and direct application of epigenetics in agriculture is also described. The chapter "Deciphering the Universe of RNA Structures and Trans RNA-RNA Interactions of Transcriptomes in vivo - from Experimental Protocols to Computational Analyses" is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

This book presents the state of the art in designing high-performance algorithms that combine simulation and optimization in order to solve complex optimization problems in science and industry, problems that involve time-consuming simulations and expensive multi-objective function evaluations. As traditional optimization approaches are not applicable per se, combinations of computational intelligence, machine learning, and high-performance computing methods are popular solutions. But finding a suitable method is a challenging task, because numerous approaches have been proposed in this highly dynamic field of research. That's where this book comes in: It covers both theory and practice, drawing on the real-world insights gained by the contributing authors, all of whom are leading researchers. Given its scope, if offers a comprehensive reference guide for researchers, practitioners, and advanced-level students interested in using computational intelligence and machine learning to solve expensive optimization problems.