In a blog entry by Steve Steinberg Group think he discuss lots of interesting terms like "human terrain mapping", "crowd theory" and "social simulation". He notes Isaac Asimov wrote stories about psychohistory which allowed the prediction of the future of large groups of people in a similar way that the action mass of atoms can be predicted. The co-incident was I watched the Einstien Factor tonight where one of the contestant's special subject was Asimov's Foundation Series. I remember reading a short story along these lines. I've found the Wikipedia article about the story.