Trento is hosting the first center for computational social sciences

14/12/2022 Il Center for Computational Social Sciences and Human Dynamics (C2S2) è stato attivato dai dipartimenti di Sociologia e Ricerca sociale e di Economia e Management dell’Università di Trento insieme alla Fondazione Bruno Kessler. Tre le direzioni principali in cui si muove fin da subito l’attività del Centro: l’attenzione per le smart city; gli studi organizzativi e la gestione dei dati nella pubblica amministrazione a supporto delle decisioni e delle politiche di sviluppo.

Computational social sciences use digital technologies needed to guide the development of public policies and production systems. They lie at the intersection of computer science, statistics and social sciences. They follow the digital traces produced in the various and daily economic, administrative and social processes to study human activities and relationships. They use an enormous amount of demographic, behavioral, network, and Internet of Things data through powerful computational tools and the same basic scientific questions that drive traditional social sciences.

The Center for Computational Social Sciences and Human Dynamics (C2S2) was set up by the departments of Sociology and Social Research and Economics and Management of the University of Trento together with Fondazione Bruno Kessler. The interdisciplinary working group is composed of sociologists, computer scientists, economists, statisticians, social and behavioral psychologists, philosophers, linguists, humanists whose common interest is to work in the fields of computational social science and data science. C2S2 aims to develop innovative models, methodologies, techniques and applications through the exploitation of the cognitive and application potential offered by large digital data centers, data mining and AI applications, and formal and theoretical processing in the computational social sciences.

The main directions in which the activity of the Center will move right from the start are three: attention to smart cities (with, for example, the focus on mobility, urbanization, transformations of the city fabric, depopulation or degradation phenomena); organizational studies (for example, well-being in the workplace, enhancement of skills, information and organizational flows); data management in public administration to support decision-making and development policies.