Emerging M&S challenges for human, social, cultural, and behavioral modeling

The discipline of Modeling and Simulation (M&S) is ubiquitous in many domains, such as training and education, support of decision-making, or analysis of potential developments. In particular the armed forces apply M&S extensively and enable pioneering applications of M&S. Events within the last decade have resulted in a radical change of tasks the armed forces have to fulfill. These new tasks focus not so much on attrition, movement, and warfighting operations, but on reconstruction, crisis prevention, police tasks, and many other efforts that are conducted in collaboration with or in support of civil agencies and organizations. Challenges of these changing tasks require a new view on M&S support as well, as a "whole of society" approach is needed, focusing on human, social, cultural, and behavioral modeling. Human sciences are playing an increasing role. One of the first challenges is to establish a community of experts that can support such endeavors. One of the results should be a list of necessary and available models and methods. On the longer term, a common framework to identify applicable models and methods, select the best option, compose individual solutions, and orchestrate their execution is needed. This paper contributes to a research agenda.