Nanjing University’s “Socio-Economic Environmental System Virtual Simulation Experimental Teaching Center” was established in 2009. It was based on the “National Experimental Teaching Center of Environmental Science and Engineering,” which had already had a solid foundation in the field of virtual simulation experimental teaching of social and natural environment, and the “Jiangsu Management-Control Integration Experimental Teaching Center,” which had had accumulated rich experience in virtual simulation experimental teaching of industrial engineering, automation and finance.

The center cooperates with Nanjing University Computing Experiment Center, which has strong research strengths in the field of socio-economic simulation and computing. The center therefore has the funding support of “985” discipline construction funds and has the base point of the disciplines which have the technical support and financing of university-enterprise cooperation in research and development.

The center upholds its goal of serving the undergraduate-level experimental practice teaching of a number of majors in the liberal arts. Meanwhile, it provides resources and technical support for graduate-level experimental practice teaching and for the research by the center’s teachers.

It aims to construct its virtual simulation experimental teaching resources according to the five layered platforms, build its hardware and software platforms with the support of excellent faculty and sound management system, and it attaches importance to the coverage and sharing of its resources with colleagues on and off the university campus. In 2014, at the approval by the Ministry of Education, Nanjing University’s “Socio-Economic Environmental System Virtual Simulation Experimental Teaching Center” has become one of the first 100 “National Virtual Simulation Experimental Teaching Centers” in China. The completed hardware and software system structure of the center is shown as follows:

·  Undergraduate Student Experimental Practice

·  Graduate Student Experimental Practice

·  Teachers’ Research

·  Nanjing University Socio-Economic Environment Virtual Simulation Experimental Teaching Center

·  On-campus Coverage and Sharing

·  Virtual Simulation Experiment Center Management System

·  Center Platform and Structure

·  Human Factors and Behavior Virtual Simulation Platform

·  Regional Environmental Analysis and Policy Virtual Simulation Platform

·  Virtual Simulation Platform of Socio-Economic Comprehensive Calculation

·  Logistics Supply Chain Virtual Simulation Platform

·  Economic and Financial Virtual Simulation Platform

·  Virtual Simulation Experiment Center Faculty

·  Off-Campus Coverage and Sharing

·  Experimental Resources Support

·  Provincial Level Experimental Center of Management and Control Integration

·  National Level Experimental Center of Environmental Science

·  Academic Support

·  Management Science and Engineering

·  Environmental Science

·  Research Support

·  Nanjing University Computational Experiment Center

·  National Key Basic Research and Development Plan (“973” Plan), National High Technology Research and Development Plan (“863” Plan) and National Natural Science Fund of China

·  University-Enterprise Cooperation Support

·  NARI Group Corporation

·  Huatai Securities

·  Direct Support Majors

·  Industrial Engineering

·  Financial Engineering

·  Environmental Engineering

After years of construction, Nanjing University’s “Socio-Economic Environmental System Virtual Simulation Experimental Teaching Center” has been set up on Xianlin Campus of the university, with about 3,500 square meters of floor space for experimental teaching and management, 24 professional laboratories, and 50 million yuan worth fixed assets of instruments and equipment. All lab computers have been connected to the campus network of the university.

In the construction of virtual simulation experiment resources, the center always adheres to “humanity at the core” (i.e., “human factors and behavior virtual simulation experimental platform”), including typical social systems (“logistics supply chain virtual simulation experimental platform”), economy (“economic and financial virtual simulation experimental platform”) and ecological environment (“regional environmental analysis and policy virtual simulation experimental platform”) as the basis, integrating the original two centers and two disciplines of Nanjing University.

Based on the “Socio-Economic Comprehensive Computing Virtual Simulation Platform” developed by the Nanjing University Social Science and Big Data Computing Experiment Center for many years of research results, as well as the research results of the National Key Basic Research and Development Program (“973” Plan), the National High Technology Research Program (“863” Plan) and the National Natural Science Fund of China, the center has preliminarily constructed a full-time and part-time excellent experimental teaching and management faculty with more than 50 people, supervised by academicians of engineering academies and national teaching masters, and backed by famous experts and professors with high academic levels, solid professional practice and high teaching and research calibers, combining the old, middle-aged and young people with a balance in academic titles and specialties.

It has formulated a series of operable rules and regulations for open experimental teaching and management and has tentatively formed a teaching quality supervision system with experimental teaching supervision as the main body.

At present, the center can open more than 30 comprehensive experimental projects and more than 100 individual experiments, covering the course experiments and comprehensive experiments of many majors in liberal arts such as financial engineering, management, and sociology. At the same time, it can provide virtual simulation experimental teaching of related courses for science and technology majors such as computer science and technology, environmental engineering, and industrial engineering. It can also provide virtual simulation experimental research platform for practical teaching of graduate students and research of corresponding disciplines.

In addition, the virtual simulation experiment platform of the socio-economic environment developed by the center has been providing virtual simulation experiment teaching and technical support for Jiangsu University, Huatai Securities, Nanjing Research Institute of Electronic Engineering (NRIEE), Taihu Lake and Chaohu Lake Pollution Control Offices and other institutions, research institutes and government agencies in personnel training, policy consultation and scientific research for many years.