CDI-Type II Collaborative Research: Understanding social networks, complex systems

该项目创建了一个由历史学家、地理学家、计算机科学家和数学家组成的多学科研究虚拟组织（SOCNET），以共享历史社会科学数据，并开发地理集成框架，以解决复杂、动态、非线性系统和社会网络问题。通过多学科合作，SOCNET将融合定性和定量数据，将人类、事件和环境联系起来，并通过这种联系形成地理空间内部和跨地理空间的历史叙述。该项目的最终目标是通过计算创新和叙事知识创造，更好地将计算思维注入历史社会科学，以彻底改变这些学科的研究成果，向地理整合历史转变。SOCNET在动态GIS（地理信息系统）和相关信息技术方面的发展将为理解复杂的历史社会系统提供支柱，其中包含三个组成部分，这些组成部分定义了地理整合的历史范式：(1)任何地方的历史都是通过该地方与其他地方的联系方式以及这些联系随时间的变化以重要的方式形成的；(2)历史时期是复杂的、动态的、非线性的系统，在空间上很大，在最近的几个世纪里，在全球范围内扩展，这些系统有时变得不稳定，导致相变、分岔和新系统的组织；(3)在这样的系统中，人和地方以一种自组织的方式通过社会网络连接起来。SOCNET将以第一个全球时代（1400-1800）为重点，用计算思维改变历史研究：(1)使用计算工具对数据进行组织、存储、操作和恢复的新方法；(2)用于现实世界动态可视化和分析的新型时空GIS；(3)数据协调和文本挖掘的新工具；(4)在计算环境中使用模糊、不确定和不完整的信息和定性数据的新方法；(5)新的建模形式来表示领域专家的推论；(6)超越地图和基于动画的时间GIS可视化的新隐喻。项目中开发的协作协议、工具、模型、数据结构和算法将形成并呈现在基于网络的教育材料中，为感兴趣的研究人员及其学生提供方便的访问。除了历史社会科学和地理信息科学之外，SOCNET还将促进计算机科学、数学建模和仿真、环境科学、医学研究和交通研究方面的创新。合作的计算机科学家和数学家将开发创新的计算概念和工具，以更好地捕捉复杂非线性系统中重叠的多维社会网络的动态。为了解决与在计算环境中使用历史信息相关的困难，SOCNET将进一步促进历史和历史社会科学中的“空间转向”思想。由于历史社会科学专业中女性和少数民族的比例较高，该项目将吸引这些学生进入一个技术丰富的教育和就业环境。该项目将支持现有的地理整合史硕士学位、即将推出的跨学科社会与环境动力学博士学位、未来的计算机科学与计算科学硕士学位，以及一个新的地理信息学跨学科学位课程的发展，为学生提供地理信息科学与技术的教育重点，以更好地理解动态的人类和环境系统。

This project creates a multidisciplinary research virtual organization (SOCNET) of historians, geographers, computer scientists, and mathematicians to share historical social science data and develop geographically integrated frameworks to address complex, dynamic, nonlinear systems and social networks.Through multidisciplinary collaboration, SOCNET will fuse qualitative and quantitative data to connect humans, events, and environments, and through such connections form historical narratives within and across geographic spaces. The project's ultimate goal is to better infuse computational thinking into the historical social sciences through computational innovation and narrative knowledge creation to revolutionize research outcomes in these disciplines with a shift to Geographically-Integrated History. SOCNET's developments in Dynamics GIS (geographic information systems) and related information technologies will provide the backbone for understanding complex historical social systems with three components that define the geographically-integrated history paradigm: (1) the history of any place is shaped in significant ways by the way the place is connected to other places and by the changes in these connections over time; (2) historical periods are complex, dynamic, nonlinear systems that are spatially large, and in more recent centuries, global in extension, and these systems sometimes become unstable, leading to a phase transition, bifurcation, and the organization of new systems; and (3) within such systems, people and places are connected by social networks in a self-organizing fashion. Focusing on the first global age (1400-1800), SOCNET will transform historical research with computational thinking on (1) new means for the representation of data for organizing, storing, manipulating, and recovering them for exploration using computational tools; (2) new spatial-temporal GIS for the visualization and analysis of real world dynamics; (3) new tools for data harmonization and text mining; (4) new approaches to the use of information that is vague, uncertain, and incomplete and of qualitative data within a computational context; (5) new forms of modeling to represent the inferences of domain experts; and (6) new metaphors beyond the map and animation-based visualization for temporal GIS. Collaborative protocols, tools, models, data structures, and algorithms developed in the project will be shaped and presented in web-based educational materials to provide interested researchers and their students with easy access. Beyond the historical social sciences and geographic information science, SOCNET will promote innovations in computer science, mathematical modeling and simulation, environmental sciences, medical research, and transportation studies. Collaborating computer scientists and mathematicians will develop innovative computational concepts and tools to better capture the dynamism of overlapping, multi-dimensional social networks within a complex, nonlinear system. In solving the difficulties associated with using historical information within a computational environment, SOCNET will further promote the idea of 'spatial turn' within history and the historical social sciences. Because of the higher percentage of women and minorities among majors in the historical social sciences, the project will attract such students into a technologically rich educational and employment environment. The project will support the development of an existing Master's in geographically-integrated history, a forthcoming interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Social and Environmental Dynamics, a future M.S. in Computer Science and Computational Sciences, and a new interdisciplinary degree program in Geoinformatics, providing students educational emphases on geographic information science and technology to seek better understanding of dynamic human and environmental systems.