There was an interesting conference in Phoenix a week ago – Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling and Prediction . This workshop is sponsored by Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), with School of Computing and Informatics, ASU. 

Social computing is concerned with the study of social behavior and social context based on computational systems. Behavioral modeling reproduces the social behavior, and allows for experimenting, scenario planning, and deep understanding of behavior, patterns, and potential outcomes. The pervasive use of computer and Internet technologies provides an unprecedented environment of various social activities. Social computing facilitates behavioral modeling in model building, analysis, pattern mining, and prediction. Numerous interdisciplinary and interdependent systems are created and used to represent the various social and physical systems for investigating the interactions between groups, communities, or nation-states. This requires joint efforts to take advantage of the state-of-the-art research from multiple disciplines, social computing, and behavioral modeling in order to document lessons learned and develop novel theories, experiments, and methodologies in terms of social, physical, psychological, and governmental mechanisms. The goal is to enable us to experiment, create, and recreate an operational environment with a better understanding of the contributions from each individual discipline, forging joint interdisciplinary efforts.