Social Simulations: from Agent-Based Modeling to Digital Twins

This book chapter surveys the evolution of social simulation across three paradigms: classical agent-based modeling with explicitly specified behavioral rules, AI-enhanced simulations using large language models, and Social Digital Twins that represent specific real-world socio-technical systems through high-fidelity, data-driven models. It compares their methodological foundations, applications, advantages, and limitations. The chapter frames this progression as a shift from abstract computational models for studying general social mechanisms toward increasingly realistic representations of particular societies, organizations, or infrastructures. Its value is primarily conceptual: it provides a vocabulary for comparing established simulation methods with newer LLM-based and digital-twin approaches.