Advanced Biopsychosocial Simulation for Harmful Adolescent Behaviour

Project Information

LIFECOURSE-ABM

Grant agreement ID: 101069400

DOI

10.3030/101069400

Project closed

EC signature date 2 August 2022

Start date 1 September 2022

End date 29 February 2024

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 150 000,00

Coordinated by

HASKOLINN I REYKJAVIK EHF
Iceland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LIFECOURSE-ABM (Advanced Biopsychosocial Simulation for Harmful Adolescent Behaviour)

Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-02-29

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Of central concern in many cities, municipalities, and countries is the creation and deployment of intervention programs that can positively affect youth overconsumption of alcohol and other recreational drugs. Creating and implementing measurable and effective such programs to mitigate this can be both expensive and challenging. The SIMLife project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of a new approach with the potential to revolutionize such work. By automating the use of a vast set of data, using a simulation approach built on modern computational technologies and artificial intelligence, an interactive method for the creation and evaluation of intervention programs everywhere is enabled, speeding up such work, reducing uncertainty, and lowering cost. The software simulation gives researchers and practitioners alike a way to address in-silico deep questions about social programs, intervention strategies, their implementation, cost, and effectiveness. The work rests in part on longitudinal data contained in the LIFECOURSE database, developed by Reykjavik University's Dr. Inga Dóra Sigfúsdóttir and her colleagues over the past 30 years. The SIMLife computational infrastructure is intended to supercharge these efforts, providing the next level of social research on which new theories can be built, as well as enabling new and efficient practical uses for a wide variety of stakeholders, from from therapists to urban planners, municipalities to cities to whole countries. The SIMLife proof-of-concept project is co-directed by Dr. Sigfúsdóttir and Dr. Kristinn R. Thórisson.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Prototype of a new simulation platform implemented (version 1.0-beta).
Validation of a methodology for modeling a collection of social theories (version 1.0-beta).
Process and methodology for expert communication and collaborate to consolidate diverse partial models of human behavior (version 1.0-beta).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The prototypes created version 1.0-beta) go over and beyond state of the art by providing a new holistic approach to:
- collecting and unifying data about human behavior.
- consolidating data in diverse environments about human behavior.
- bridging data from three levels of detail (psychological, social, and biological)
- building large-scale unifying simulations that can be used as research tools in a broad domain

The work is done in the context of the simulation and prevention of youth substance abuse. Efforts remain to be done for evaluating the potential for expansion to other aspects of psycho-social domains.

SocialInsight simulation framework is based on theories of social behavior of youth