We warmly invite submissions to the conference track “Social Simulation for Societal Resilience: Crisis Dynamics, Policy-Making, and Learning” at the Social Simulation Conference 2026, taking place in Durham, UK, from August 24–28.
Track description:
Recent years have highlighted the growing importance of social simulation as a tool to understand crises, support policy-making, and strengthen societal resilience. Simulation approaches can help analyse past crises, provide insights during ongoing disruptions, and assist in preparing for future ones. However, significant challenges remain.
Crisis contexts profoundly reshape how simulations are designed, validated, and used: urgency, shifting stakeholder needs, limited or unreliable data, and intense pressure on modellers challenge conventional scientific practices. Despite growing interest, systematic knowledge on how to effectively develop and deploy social simulations during crises remains limited, and institutional capacity for evidence-based policymaking using social simulation is uneven, particularly during crisis response.
Additionally, while crises are often framed as opportunities for building resilience, such outcomes are far from guaranteed. Post-crisis learning is shaped by political dynamics such as blame games, framing contests, and policy over- or under-reaction, often sidelining the role of expertise and modelling.
This special track aims to advance social simulation theories, methods, and tools to better understand and support crisis management and resilience building through research drawing from a wide range of fields (e.g., sociology, psychology, crisis management, and public administration).
We invite submissions addressing topics related to societal resilience and policy modelling across all phases of crises, including (but not limited to):
Social simulation for crisis and disaster preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery
Modelling and evaluating policy interventions during crises
Resilience, including learning, adaptation, and institutional change after crises
Data limitations and validation challenges in crisis simulation
Deadline: March 27th
Submission types:
Poster Abstracts: 300-500 words, to be presented as a poster at the dedicated poster session at the conference
Extended Abstracts: 3-4 pages, can be a work in progress
Full Papers for presentation only: 6-12 pages, should be complete papers with model design, results and conclusions (or other appropriate content), but can include work in progress elements
Full Papers for proceedings: 6-12 pages, should be complete papers with model design, results and conclusions (or other appropriate content). These papers may be subject to additional review.
For registering and submitting to this track, see the conference website.
We look forward to receiving your submissions and meeting you in Durham!
Vittorio Nespeca, Loïs Vanhèe, and Francesca Giardini