Immerse: Multimodal speech interfaces to GIS. Changing urban dimensions of Calgary Understanding the role played by cities and city dwellers, as entities in the ecological world system, is crucial if humans are to direct social development onto a sustainable trajectory. More than half of humanity now lives in urban environments and as their numbers escalate, their actions will have ever-increasing significance in determining the future livability of the earth for humans. Given the current status of the world ecological system, will it continue to have the ability to provide indefinitely the material necessities for human existence on earth? A tractable method for integrating the vast quantity of information required to answer these questions has been emerging too slowly to counteract the status quo of unsustainable practice and too slowly, some contend, to steer clear of the dire consequences forecast as a result of this inability.
Self-Organization - CasGroup. From CasGroup Self-organization is a process where the internal organization of a system increases, and the organizational change takes place without being controlled, guided and managed completely by the environment (i.e. the system is involved in the increase of organization itself). The name already implies that feedback is an important factor in many self-organizing systems, and in fact feedback and emergence are the two most fundamental terms related to self-organization.
As the name suggests, Self-Organization occurs in a system if, left to itself, it maintains its organization or even tends to become more organized. "Left to itself" means without being controlled and guided explicitly by external orders or commands. A true self-organizing system increases and maintains organization without organizer, central control and explicit management through managers, only through context dependent local interactions. Definitions Various Attemps and Views Self-Organization is problematic.
Adaptation - CasGroup. From CasGroup Adaptation is a response to environmental conditions: the process of adjustment to given (outer) conditions. It refers to a any change in the structure or function of an entity (say, a biological organism or a software system) that allows it to act more effectively, efficiently and successfully in its environment. Originally, the term adapted meant "apt, or suited to, to, some particular purpose or other" (Keller and Lloyd, 1992). In evolutionary systems, adaptation means the change of traits across generations which increase the fitness . It is the "characteristic of an organism whose form is the result of selection in a particular functional context" (Keller and Lloyd, 1992).
In physiology, it means physiological adjustments and short-term cdhanges in response to environmental conditions. Function, Purpose and Niche Occupation In Pyschology, adaptation describes the process of change in organisms or species to accommodate to a particular environment. Requirements Examples. Complex Adaptive Systems Modeling - a SpringerOpen journal. Emergence - CasGroup. From CasGroup The classic view of "emergence" Emergence is a process which describes the appearance of emergent properties and phenomena.
A property of a system is emergent, if it is not a property of any fundamental element. Composite entities can have properties that can not be found in the parts of the composition. Emergence happens through connections and interactions. Introduction An emergent behavior is not imposed from the outside by a central controller or organizer, it results solely from the interactions between the agents. Already Aristotle knew emergence: he said the whole is sometimes more than the sum of its parts (He considered the question of unity for aggregated things "which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts", Aristotle Metaphysics Book VIII, Chapter 6).
Types and Forms The definitions here in the wiki are more like Chalmers , and less like Bedau . Andrew Assad and Norman H. Overview. Complex Network - CasGroup. From CasGroup A complex network forms the backbone of a complex system : the nodes correspond to the agents, entities or parts of the complex system, the edges to the interactions between them. A network is essentially anything which can be represented by a graph: a set of points, nodes or vertices, connected by links, ties or edges.
In social networks, the nodes are people, and the ties between them are (variously) acquaintance, friendship, political alliance or professional collaboration. In multi-agent systems , the nodes are agents, and two nodes are connected if they interact with each other. In distributed computing and distributed systems , the nodes are computers or processes, and the links are channels for messages. In the case of the Internet, the nodes are actual machines, and they are joined by a link when they are physically tied together.
Scale-Free Networks A network is named scale-free, if it does not have a certain scale. Small-World Networks Common characteristics Links. Multi-Agent System - CasGroup. From CasGroup A Multi-Agent System (MAS) is a system composed of several autonomous agents which are able to interact and communicate with each other. In software, MAS are realised as software agents. The field of MAS is related to Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and also to distributed systems . MAS is also an abbreviation for Mobile Agent System . Elements Agents represented by abstract actors or persons Basic elements of a MAS are (a) the agents themselves (b) their interaction and communication (c) the necessary middleware or environment .
Autonomous Agents As the name says, a Multi-Agent System is a system composed of several autonomous agents . Interaction and Communication Communication is a central property of any distributed system , and it is very important in MAS. The first element of a FIPA ACL message is the communicative act which defines the message type (request, refuse, agree, inform,..) while the rest is a sequence of message parameters. Organization Applications. Complex Adaptive Systems - Webs of Delight. By Chris Lucas "Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. "Mignon McLaughlin "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents... What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning. "Max Planck, The Philosophy of Physics, 1936 Introduction In the world of yesterday the clockwork toys ruled. A mushroom cloud of change swept the Earth, mountains collapsed, rivers dried up, the cosy world of horse and sail exploded into a multi-fragmented cascade of invention.
This is a vision of tomorrow, a world out of control, yet promising a level of understanding and achievement far beyond anything yet seen. Control Collapse Late in the 20th Century we began to realise that linear prediction, far from being the ubiquitous panacea of success imagined in the past, was only a simplified viewpoint applicable to relatively few systems. 'complex adaptive system' Complex Systems as a Foundation for a Grand Theory of Everything. Serendip Studio. TEDxRotterdam - Igor Nikolic - Complex adaptive systems. Melanie Moses 
Complex Adaptive Living Systems.