Portal:Complex Systems Digital Campus/E-Laboratory on Piemonte for Situated Collective Intelligence in Complex Societies

e-Laboratory on Collective Situated Intelligence

Challenges
The collaboration of many individuals is generally considered a feature of collective intelligence (a). This however, does not necessarily mean that they share a cognitive stance. Intelligence can be exhibited by a network of different individuals, whereby successful actions depend on the activities of the entire network (b). Furthermore, the conjunction of the social network and its environment is by no means secondary. The environment, in fact, is not a passive entity. It can be dynamically shaped by the actions of (ICT-supported) intelligent behaviour. The information (knowledge) embodied in the set of tangible (and intangible) human artefacts are themselves vehicle for more successful/novel human actions (c). Insofar as environment itself can be a source for intelligent behaviours (i.e. allowing human failures, avoiding risks, preserving identity, etc.), collective intelligence is dependent upon the situated beings in the world (d).

Increasing the capability to deal with the kind of processes mentioned sub a., b, c and d, is a main challenge learning human organizations have to face for steering their evolution trajectories towards more viable and socially desirable outcome. Within the roadmap of the COMPLEXITY SCIENCEDIGITAL CAMPUS the goal of the Piedmont e-Laboratory is to contribute growing this capability. It will build upon the asset of expertise already existing in the region while seeing to developing the relationships with other research centres and organizations interested in addressing the different issues situated collective intelligence.

of the responsible for the e-laboratory

 * Responsible: Sylvie Occelli (occelli@ires.piemonte.it)
 * Contacts: Simone Landini (landini@ires.piemonte.it), Elena Poggio (poggio@ires.piemonte.it)

list of the teams participating in the e-laboratory

 * CPM-MMU (Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Law) | cfpm.org
 * Bruce Edmonds (bruce@edmonds.name)
 * CSI-Piemonte (Piedmont Consortium for Information System) | www.csipiemonte.it/en/
 * Giuliana Bonello (giuliana.bonello@csi.it)
 * Silvia Zanchetta (silvia.zanchetta@csi.it)
 * CSP-Innovazione nelle ICT s.c.a.r.l. (Centre for Excellence for ICT Research and Development) | www.csp.it
 * Michela Pollone (pollone@csp.it)
 * Sergio Duretti (innovazione@csp.it)
 * IRES Piemonte (Socio Economic Research Institute of Piedmont) | www.ires.piemonte.it
 * Simone Landini (landini@ires.piemonte.it)
 * Sylvie Occelli (occelli@ires.piemonte.it)
 * Elena Poggio (poggio@ires.piemonte.it)
 * ISI Foundation (Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation) | www.isi.it
 * Ciro Cattuto (ciro.cattuto@isi.it)
 * Daniela Paolotti (daniela.paolotti@isi.it)
 * TOP-IX (Torino Piemonte Internet Exchange) | www.top-ix.org
 * Lorenzo Benussi (lorenzo.benussi@top-ix.org)
 * Leonardo Camiciotti (leonardo.camiciotti@top-ix.org)
 * Andrea Casalegno (andrea.casalegno@top-ix.org)
 * UNITO-Be.Compl.Ex@Unito (Università degli Studi di Torino–Research Centre on Behavioural, Complexity and Experimental Economics)
 * Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica “Cognetti de Martiis” | www.unito.it/unitoWAR/appmanager/dipartimenti4/D031_en?_nfpb=true
 * Magda Fontana (magda.fontana@unito.it)
 * Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali Matematico-Statistiche | www.esomas.unito.it
 * Pietro Terna (pietro.terna@unito.it)

Coordination committee
(to be completed)

Research projects in the e-laboratory

 * CPM is currently involved in the €3M UK-based project on the “Social Complexity of Immigration and Diversity” (SCID, http://scid-project.org) which is seeking to integrate further the social and complexity sciences using a layered simulation methodology. This methodology starts from complex simulations that is maximally consistent with the available evidence and expert opinion and progresses to gradually abstract from this to simpler models more amenable to rigorous analysis. In this way it seeks to combine the relevance of complex models with the rigour of simple ones, using a well-ordered related “chain” of models at different levels of abstraction. This project will focus on three issues of relevance: the level political participation, the use of multiple social networks that jobseekers use to look for employment, and a more general model of inter-community involvement and trust.


 * CSI is supporting an applied research scholarship in Complex Systems Science issued by the ISI Foundation and supervised by IRES, aimed to the analysis of the information stored inside the log files produced by the consortiumʹs infrastructure of services during the last year.


 * IRES has been involved since 2005 in a regional project meant to monitor ICT diffusion among firms, citizens and local authorities. That was a unique experience, at least in the Italian context, to investigate the extent to which ICT usages can help reconfiguring the functioning of individual, social and governmental organizations. Since 2007 IRES manages the regional Road Safety Monitoring Centre of Piedmont established by the Regional Road Safety Plan of 2007 with the mission to support road safety initiatives, through information, research and education. The organization and activities of the centre are an example of a socio-technical system, aimed to progressively innovate road safety practices. Together with other participants IRES had been awarded of an INET (Institute for New Economic Thinking) grant in 2011 for the research project ʺAnalytical aspects of real-financial linkages in systems of heterogeneous agentsʺ (2012-2014): this project aims to build a new generation of models fit to analyze and manage new governance challenges in out-of-equilibrium economic systems dominated by financial bubbles and domino-like collapses of the financial sectors. These models will be helpful tools for the governance of globalised and interconnected economies.


 * ISI runs several world-class projects (http://www.isi.it/projects) on modelling socio-technical systems and in general systems that entangle social dynamics, information dynamics and ICT infrastructures and services. Among others: SocioPatterns (http://www.sociopatterns.org) is an interdisciplinary scientific research project that adopts this data-driven methodology with the aim of uncovering fundamental patterns in social dynamics and coordinated human activity; GSDP-Global Systems Dynamics and Policyis an FP7 funded coordination action to develop a research program for the study of global systems in an ongoing dialogue with decision makers. GSDP will operate as an open network evolving through workshops, working papers, publications, and open conferences. EVERYAWARE-Enhancing Environmental Awareness Through Social Information Technologies- proposes a new technological platform combining sensing technologies, networking applications and data-processing tools as well as the Web and the existing mobile communication networks. This platform will integrate participatory sensing with the monitoring of subjective opinions with the aim of investigating the mechanisms by which the local perception of an environmental issue, corroborated by quantitative data, evolves into socially-shared opinions, eventually driving behavioural changes; S3: Steering Socio-Technical Systems is a multipronged scientific program that advances along several research thrusts to explore and pursue the most advanced frontiers that link science and research to societal issues. Its program aims at building the mathematical, modelling and computational foundations of the analysis of socio-technical systems as well as to provide a portfolio of case studies to assess the feasibility and impact of this framework in real world problems and applications, reaching beyond the scientific community and involving the much wider network of decision and policy makers by providing new tools for managing a society hopefully more and more knowledge driven. ISI also coordinates the FP7 EPIWORK project, that pursues a multidisciplinary effort aimed at developing knowledge and tools needed for the design of epidemic forecast infrastructures to be used by epidemiologists, public health scientists and decision makers (e.g., http://www.gleamviz.org/, https://www.influenzanet.eu/ ).


 * TOP-IX has helped startups to test and develop new ideas, technologies and business models. Over 350 projects have been sustained since 2006. Among other activities TOP-IX is currently focused on “Big Data” related challenges. The intrinsic features of “Big Data” require high performance computing, ultra broadband networks and, more important, an interdisciplinary approach to extract meaningful information from the flood of digital data. Following that path, TOP-IX organizes a unique training programs (Big Dive) to teach Data Science, Software Development and Data Visualization, with the aim of providing the competences needed to turn digital data into economic and social impact.

e-laboratory Scientific Committee
(to be completed)

URL for the Website and/or Wiki of the e-laboratory

 * page at Wikiversity

Grid, Cloud, or other network utilities to be used

 * CSI: http://www.csipiemonte.it/cms/magazine/tutte-le-interviste/1386--i-servizi-it-del-csi-piemonte.html


 * CSP: http://www.csp.it/cosa-facciamo/?lang=en


 * TOP-IX: Top-IX has developed a cloud computing platform in order to leverage resources (IaaS) for ICT ventures (startups) and for no-profit projects in the research, education and social innovation areas. The platform relies on free software components of proven stability and provides a state of the art service in terms of capacity, scalability and reliability. http://www.top-ix.org/en/

Data and/or Tools to be shared

 * CSI: Business Intelligence, GIS, Big Data Analytics platforms. http://www.csipiemonte.it/en/component/content/article/383-business-intelligence.html


 * CSP can make available a collaborative platform for online cooperation and knowledge sharing among partners.


 * IRES can manage methodological tools for the analysis of complex socioeconomic systems and a laboratory for policy analysis experiments and simulations.


 * Be.Compl.Ex@Unito can share a Swarm-Like simulation tool written in Python: http://eco83.econ.unito.it/terna/slapp