Humans & technology form my drive & focus. They are both tremendously fascinating and empowering when combined allowing me to engage with meaningful challenges.
In my research I focus on understanding human behaviour in group(s) as a part of a complex (social) system. My research can be characterised by the overall question: ‘How does group or collective behaviour arise or change given its social and physical context?‘ More specifically, I have engaged with: ‘How is (individual) human behaviour affected by being in a crowd?’, ‘Why do some groups (cooperatively) use their resources sustainably, whereas others do not?‘, ‘What is the role of (often implicit simplistic) assumptions regarding human behaviour for science and/or management?’
To address these questions, I use computational simulations to integrate and reflect synthesised knowledge from literature, empirics and experts. Models, simulation and data analysis are my tools for gaining a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying such systems. More specifically, I work with agent-based modelling (ABM), simulation experiments and data analysis of large datasets. Apart from crowd modelling and social-ecological modelling, I also develop methodological tools to analyse social simulation data and combining ABM with other methods, such as behavioural experiments.
Focus on social-ecological systems. I contribute towards deeper understanding of human (group) behaviour in natural resource management. Case experts and data, theory and a variety of methods allow for integrating and modelling (system) behaviour from an unique angle. Projects: FIBE, AgentEx and COBA.
SES-LINK| Stockholm Resilience Centre | Stockholm University
Focus on support water policy and sustainable river management in the Netherlands. Contributed to running the serious games with water policy developers. I modelled policy decision dynamics as social uncertainty in long-term water management, based on conducted interviews. Project: adaptation pathways.
Faculty of Geoscience | Utrecht University
For my PhD I developed a social, cognitive model of crowd behaviour, ‘CROSS’, to study the behavioural mechanisms underlying crowd behaviour. Project: CROSS.
Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen
Business Unit Human Factors, TNO Safety & Defense
For my master thesis project, I developed a model of egress (people fleeing out of buildings into the streets). This project was executed in Freiburg (Germany) as a part of the RoboCup rescue simulation team ResQ-Freiburg.
Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences | University of Groningen | The Netherlands
Department of Computer Science | Albert-Ludwigs University | Freiburg , Germany
Schill, C., Wijermans, N., Schlüter, M., & Lindahl, T. (2016). Cooperation Is Not Enough—Exploring Social-Ecological Micro-Foundations for Sustainable Common-Pool Resource Use. PLoS ONE, 11(8), e0157796–24. [www]
Wijermans, N., Conrado, C., van Steen, M., Martella, C., & Li, J. (2016). A landscape of crowd-management support: An integrative approach. Safety Science, 86(C), 142–164. [www]
Wijermans, N., Jorna, R., Jager, W., van Vliet, T., & Adang, O. M. J. (2013). CROSS: modelling crowd behaviour with social-cognitive agents. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 16(4). [www]
Waldherr, A., & Wijermans, N. (2013). Communicating Social Simulation Models to Sceptical Minds. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulations, 16(4). [www]
The full publication list can be find in the ‘Details’ section of this page and on google scholar
Programming: Java, Python, C/C++, Prolog
Data analysis: R, MS excel, MATLAB
Software environments: Mac OSX, Windows, Linux, Repast, NetLogo, Eclipse, Rstudio
Misc: Git, SVN, Latex, HTML, WordPress
Bercht, A. L., & Wijermans, N. (2018). Mind the mind: How to effectively communicate about cognition in social–ecological systems research. Ambio, 12, 1–15. http://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-018-1099-7
Schlüter, M., Baeza, A., Dreßler, G., Frank, K., Groeneveld, J., Jager, W., Janssen, M.A., McAllister R. R. J., Müller B., Orach, K., Schwarz, N, and Wijermans, N. (2017). A framework for mapping and comparing behavioural theories in models of social-ecological systems. Ecological Economics, 131, 21–35. [www]
Schill, C., Wijermans, N., Schlüter, M., & Lindahl, T. (2016). Cooperation Is Not Enough—Exploring Social-Ecological Micro-Foundations for Sustainable Common-Pool Resource Use. PLoS ONE, 11(8), e0157796–24. [www]
Wijermans, N., Conrado, C., van Steen, M., Martella, C., & Li, J. (2016). A landscape of crowd-management support: An integrative approach. Safety Science, 86(C), 142–164. [www]
Andringa, T. C., van den Bosch, K. A., & Wijermans, N. (2015). Cognition from life: the two modes of cognition that underlie moral behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. [www]
Wijermans, N., Jorna, R., Jager, W., van Vliet, T. & Adang, O. (2013). CROSS: Modelling Crowd Behaviour with Social-Cognitive Agents. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. [www]
Waldherr, A. & Wijermans, N. (2013). Communicating Social Simulation Models to Sceptical Minds. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. [www]
Offermans, A., Valkering, P., Vreugdenhil, H., Wijermans, N., & Haasnoot, M. (2013). The Dutch dominant perspective on water; risks and opportunities involved. Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part A: Toxic/Hazardous Substances and Environmental Engineering. [www]
Vreugdenhil, H. & Wijermans, N. (2013). De beleidsarena van het Deltaprogramma. Water Governance [www]
Amblard, F., Geller, A., Neumann, M., Srbljinovic, A., & Wijermans, N. (2010). Analyzing Social Conflict via Computational Social Simulation: A Review of Approaches. In M. K, M. D, & S. A (Eds.), (pp. 126–141). Complex Societal Dynamics – Security Challenges and Opportunities.
Wijermans, N., & O’Neill, E. D. (2018). Towards modelling interventions in small scale fisheries (pp. 1–5). Presented at the Social Simulation conference 2018 of the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA), 23-27 September, Stockholm, Sweden.
Waldherr, Annie & Wijermans, Nanda (2015): Modelling the role of social media at street protests. Presented at the Social Simulation Conference 2015 of the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA), 14-18 September, Groningen, Netherlands.
Wijermans, N., & Schlüter, M. (2014). Modelling cooperation in Bali irrigation. In: Proceedings of the Social Simulation Conference 2014 of the 10th conference of the European Social Simulation Association, Barcelona.
Wijermans, N., & Schlüter, M. (2014). Agent-Based Case Studies for Understanding of Social-Ecological Systems: Cooperation on Irrigation in Bali. In B. Kamiński & G. Koloch (Eds.), Advances in Social Simulation Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association (Vol. 229, pp. 295–305). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39829-2_26
Wijermans, N., & Haasnoot, M. (2012). Including policy dynamics to explore water policy pathways. In A. Koch (Ed.), (pp. 175–178). The 8th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association. Salzburg, Austria.
Wijermans, N. & Vreugdenhil, H. (2012). Social Uncertainties in Social-Ecological Systems: Policy dynamics in the Dutch Delta Programme. In Seppelt, R., Voinov, A. A., Lange, S. & Bankamp, D. (Eds.) International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software Managing Resources of a Limited Planet, Sixth Biennial Meeting. Leipzig, Germany. [www]
Haasnoot, M., van Deursen, W.P.A., Middelkoop, H., van Beek, E., & Wijermans, N. (2012). An Integrated Assessment Metamodel for Developing Adaptation Pathways for Sustainable Water Management in the Lower Rhine Delta. In Seppelt, R., Voinov, A. A., Lange, S. & Bankamp, D. (Eds.) International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software Managing Resources of a Limited Planet, Sixth Biennial Meeting. Leipzig, Germany. [www]
Wijermans, N. (2011). Exploring the CROSS model: The role of density in crowds. The 7th European Social Simulation Association Conference. Montpellier, France.
Wijermans, N., Vreugdenhil, H., Haasnoot, M., & Middelkoop, H. (2011). Introducing social modelling in the water world. In The 7th European Social Simulation Association Conference. Montpellier, France.
Wijermans, N., Haasnoot, M., & Middelkoop, H. (2011). Dynamic modelling: social and physical interactions to explore future water management. In NCR days 2011: Controlling Dutch Rivers (pp. 58–59). Delft, The Netherlands. [www]
Offermans, A., Vreugdenhil H., Wijermans N., & Haasnoot M. (2011). The Dutch dominant perspective on water; Risks and opportunities involved. Sixth Dubrovnik Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems. Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Wijermans, N., Jorna, R. J. J. M., Jager, W., & van Vliet, T. (2008). Modelling the dynamics of motivational and situated behaviour. In Proceedings of the 2nd World Congress on Social Simulation. Washington, USA.
Geller, A., & Wijermans, N. (2008). “Death to …!‘: On opinion dynamics in conflict-torn Afghanistan’. In The Fifth Conference of the European Social Simulation Association. Brescia, Italy.
Wijermans, N., Jorna, R. J. J. M., Jager, W., & van Vliet, T. (2007). Modelling crowd dynamics. Influence factors related to the probability of a riot. In F. Amblard (Ed.), Proceedings of ESSA’07 the 4th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association. IRIT Editions.
Wijermans, N., Jorna, R. J. J. M., Jager, W., & van Vliet, T. (2006). Cognitive Social Agents, a Simulation in the field of Crowd Behaviour. In, Beyond the Brain: Embodied, Situated and Distributed Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Wijermans, Nanda, Schill, Caroline, Lindahl, Therese, Schlüter, Maja (2016, November 13). “AgentEx” (Version 1.0.0). CoMSES Computational Model Library. [ www ]
Wijermans, Nanda (2013, April 27). “CROSS – crowd behaviour modelling: a festival crowd model” (Version 1.1.0). CoMSES Computational Model Library. [ www]
Future research leader grant financed by FORMAS (The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning): Climate change – from the small-scale fisher’s point of view. Identifying critical multi-level processes for sustainable small-scale fisheries.
Team: Nanda Wijermans (PI), Caroline Schill, Therese Lindahl and Maja Schlüter
Member of the External advisory board – EU Horizon 2020 project SAF21 (Social science aspects of fisheries). [2016-2018].
Management committee member of ESSA (The European Social Simulation Association). [2012-2016].
Wijermans, N. (2011). Understanding crowd behaviour: Simulating situated individuals. PhD thesis. [www]
Wijermans, N. (2005). Crowd modeling and control in a Robocup Rescue Domain. University of Groningen. Master thesis. [www]
Model calendar 2015 [ www ]
1 – 5 Feb 2016: Visit & colloquium lecture at the Institute of Environmental Systems Research (Osnabrück, Germany)
26 Jan- 20 Feb 2015: Research visit at the Centre for Research Social Simulation (Guildford, UK)
25-27 Mar 2015: Research visit at the Centre for policy modelling (Manchester, UK)
18 Oct 2013: Gave a seminar on social mechanisms. Institute for Futures Studies (Stockholm, Sweden)
12 Nov 2012: Lecture at the institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, (Berlin, Germany)
22 Feb 2011: SIKS PhD modelling course – Crowd modelling (Utrecht, The Netherlands)
