ESOTECOS EMERGENT SOCIAL, TECHNICAL AND ECOLOGICAL COMPLEX SYSTEMS

The project ESoTECoS constitutes an approximation from the perspective of the physics of complex systems to the societal challenges within the field of Social Changes and Innovation. The project background lays in the interdisciplinary paradigms of the science of complex systems and in those of computational social sciences and its starting premise is that social behaviors are emergent phenomena (macro) resulting from the interaction (micro) of the agents or individuals. These emergent behaviors include cooperation, consensus, competition, systemic crises, adoption of technologies, cultural globalization, new political movements, or formation of hierarchical structures. Many of these behaviors are not unique to human societies but also appear in ecosystems. In nowadays human society, however, the presence of new information and communication technologies (ICT) drives changes at unprecedented speeds.

The study of emergent phenomena is based largely on concepts , methods, and techniques well established in traditional fields of Physics, such as the Statistical Physics, Nonlinear Dynamics, Computational Physics and Data Analysis. In this sense, ESoTECoS is the next step in a collaborative effort to basic research in the physics of complex systems kept in previous projects FISICOS (FIS2007-60327) and INTENSE@COSYP (FIS2012-30634). The step is to confront the challenge of transferring this knowledge in a way suitable to address the study of the social changes and innovations.

ESoTECoS has as general objective the generation of knowledge and tools for better informed decision making in a context of fast social transformations. To this end it is structured in three workpackages which address the following specific topics:

1. Social changes and innovation processes with social interaction at multiple levels: a) Competition between globalization and social polarization, in particular language competition and cultural dynamics, b) Processes of social contagion and spreading in the adoption of innovations, c) Problems involving coordination and social learning: social imitation versus strategic imitation.
2. Sociotechnical systems: a) Analysis of human mobility using massive data (big data) from diverse ICT sources, b) Characterization of hotspots, sociodemographic distributions and singular events, c) Electoral processes, d) Adoption of dynamic demand control and social cooperation to reduce power grid fluctuations.
3. Emergent behavior with social characteristics in ecosystems: a) Interaction between mobility, competition and inhomogeneity, b) Mechanisms for communication and cooperation in microbial populations, c) Competition and cooperation in particular in Posidonia meadows, d) Genetic diversity and environmental adaptability.