Claudio Gutiérrez's foray into computer science, databases, modeling, and university planning, with special reference to the years 1971-1973: the SIMULA project

Abstract

This article is about a particular work of the late Claudio Gutiérrez, a visionary and well-known Costa Rican philosopher, with broad productive activity in many fields, including academic university planning, to which he made important contributions.  The project which he termed SIMULA, developed in the late 1970’s is described here. An overview of the computer model used, along with its main characteristics and results, useful in the process of political decision taking for a university, are presented first.  Then, a general glimpse is given about the limiting conditions in terms of computing and data availability of those years.