FuturICT Flagship Project: Exploring and Managing our Future
"Today, we know more about the universe than about our society. It's time to use the power of information to explore social and economic life on Earth and discover options for a sustainable future. Together, we can manage the challenges of the 21st century, combining the best of all knowledge."
With this statement, the FuturICT flagship project aims to understand and manage complex, global, socially interactive systems, with a focus on sustainability and resilience. ISTC Laboratory of Agent-Based Social Simulation is Partner of the Coordination Action of the project, which is the first of six proposals selected by the European Commission within the FET Flagship competition. FET Flagship promotes large-scale, science-driven research initiatives that aim to achieve a visionary goal. Of the accepted project, in 2012 only two will be funded with €10 billion over ten years.
Why do financial markets crash again and again? How can we construct resilient institutions? What determines human happiness and well-being, and how are they influenced by personal wealth? How can society change behaviours that destroy our environment and other important public goods? These are just some of the crucial social problems FuturICT will work on.
Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying societies probably constitutes the most pressing scientific grand challenge of our century: FuturICT will integrate ICT, Social Science and Complexity Science to build a new, interdisciplinary and responsible Big Science.
FuturICT Scientific Coordinator: Dirk Helbing, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Management Coordinator : Steven Bishop, UCL, UK
Partners: Paul Lukowicz, Universität Passau, Germany; Rosaria Conte, ISTC-CNR, Italy; Felix Reed-Tsochas, Oxford University, UK; JB McCarthy, University College Cork, Ireland