Elinor Ostrom awarded with the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics Science wrote back in 2002 an essay (Ostrom, 2002) where she presents this argument: "Scholars who have long been interested in diverse public policies have often found themselves somewhat limited by their own disciplinary boundaries within contemporary universities. Cynics sometimes state it this way: 'The world has problems, but universities have departments' (Brewer, 1999)". The Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has recently created the Space & Society Program and the Center for Earth System Science-CCST aiming at specifically addressing part of this problem. It is central for both the development of innovative analytical instruments based on Science and Technology derived from the Space Program that could help sectorial public policies agents in taking the best science-informed decision when designing social policies and interventions. MAS conceptual architectures and its associated mechanisms technologies are of the main new analytical instruments for fostering the understanding through observation/simulation of coupled natural and social systems. In particular, we must deal with spatially-aware agents embedded into the real world represented within a Geographical Database framework. These geographically-aware agents (individual, families, groups and/or institutions) are involved in different processes over different scales. This talk does not intend to give the answers. The intention is to present some of the opportunities of collaboration with the AI and the MAS research community though the exposition of real study-cases, where such spatial complex dynamics systems are involved. Examples are the intra-urban dengue-fever surveillance and alert system from project Recife-SAUDAVEL and the urban social tissue description/simulation for São José dos Campos, from the MASUS research project (Feitosa, 2009).

Elinor Ostrom; Policy Analysis in the Future of Good Societies, The Good Society, v.11, n.1, 2002.
Garry D. Brewer; The challenges of interdisciplinarity, Policy Sciences, 32: 327-337, 1999.