Abstract: This special section on "Engineering Agent-Based Social Simulations" aims to represent the current state of the art in using Software Engineering (SE) methods in ABSS. It includes a mixture of theoretically oriented papers that describe frameworks, notations and methods adapted from SE and practice-oriented papers that demonstrate the application of SE methods in real world ABSS projects. Link: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/18/3/13.html The guest editors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the previous and current editor of JASSS for their constant support with this project. Regards Peer-Olaf Siebers and Paul Davidsson