Complex Adaptive Systems

The Shotton River and Mesolithic dwellings: Recreating the past from geo-seismic data sources

by Eugene Ch'ng

Evaluating artificial life-based vegetation dynamics in the context of a Virtual Reality representation of ancient landscapes

by Eugene Ch'ng

3D Archaeological Reconstruction and Visualisation: An Artificial Life Model for Determining Vegetation Dispersal Patterns in Ancient Landscapes

by Eugene Ch'ng

Complex Adaptive Systems and IS Implementation in the NHS, United Kingdom (Poster)

by Amila S. Wilegoda-Wickramage

Selectionist Approaches in Evolutionary Linguistics: an epistemological analysis

by Nathalie Gontier

Trois Générations de Théories de la Complexité: Nuances et Ambiguités

by Michel Alhadeff-Jones

Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2008). Trois Générations de Théories de la Complexité: Nuances et Ambiguités. Programme Européen MCX “Modélisation de la Complexité”. Disponible à l’adresse: http://www.mcxapc.org/docs/conseilscient/0805michel.pdf

Le recours contemporain à la notion de "complexité" renvoie fréquemment à des démarches ayant tendance à... more Le recours contemporain à la notion de "complexité" renvoie fréquemment à des démarches ayant tendance à unifier sa définition. En langue anglaise, sa réduction à une forme singulière (complexity theory ou complexity science) s'avère ainsi susceptible de masquer la variété des théories permettant de rendre compte des implications inhérentes au recours à cette notion. Cet article, en prenant en considération à la fois les traditions de recherche latines et anglosaxonnes, associées à la notion de complexité, suggère une approche plus nuancée, évitant la simplification de cette notion à certaines des conceptions dominantes qui y sont associées. Partant d'une approche étymologique, cet article propose d'envisager de façon chronologique l'émergence de trois générations de théories de la complexité; ce faisant, certains de leurs enracinements épistémologiques et socio-culturels sont introduits. D'un point de vue épistémologique, la réflexion proposée met en évidence certaines des interprétations hétérogènes sous-jacentes à la définition de ce qui est perçu comme complexe. Suivant une perspective anthropologique, ce texte évoque également la portée à la fois émancipatrice et asservissante susceptible d'être associée à l'idée de complexité. Sur la base des ambiguitiés mises en évidence, cet article suggère finalement de concevoir les contributions renvoyant aux théories contemporaines de la complexité, au même titre que la remise en question de leur légitimité épistémologique et éthique, à partir des boucles et des dynamiques dont elles sont constitutives. Ce faisant, les chercheurs et les praticiens en Sciences de l'éducation devraient considérer leurs pratiques en tant que processus
d'apprentissage dont la complexité renvoie autant aux transformations qu'ils étudient ou provoquent, qu'aux transformations inhérentes aux systèmes de représentations
auxquels ils ont recours pour les conceptualiser. 

Three Generations of Complexity Theories: Nuances and Ambiguities

by Michel Alhadeff-Jones

Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2008). Three Generations of Complexity Theories: Nuances and Ambiguities. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40, 1, 66-82.

The contemporary use of the term ‘complexity’ frequently indicates that it is considered a unified concept. This may... more The contemporary use of the term ‘complexity’ frequently indicates that it is considered a unified concept. This may lead to a neglect of the range of different theories that deal with the implications related to the notion of complexity. This paper, integrating both the English and the Latin traditions of research associated with this notion, suggests a more nuanced use of the term, thereby avoiding simplification of the concept to some of its dominant expressions only. The paper further explores the etymology of ‘complexity’ and offers a chronological presentation of three generations of theories that have shaped its uses; the epistemic and socio-cultural roots of these theories are also introduced. From an epistemological point of view, this reflection sheds light on the competing interpretations underlying the definition of what is considered as complex. Also, from an anthropological perspective it considers both the emancipatory as well as the alienating dimensions of complexity. Based on the highlighted ambiguities, the paper suggests in conclusion that contributions grounded in contemporary theories related to complexity, as well as critical appraisals of their epistemological and ethical legitimacy, need to follow the recursive feedback loops and dynamics that they constitute. In doing so, researchers and practitioners in education should consider their own practice as a learning process that does not require the reduction of the antagonisms and the complementarities that shape its own complexity.

Enhancing topology adaptation in information-sharing social networks

by Giulio Cimini

Championing Ecosystem Sustainability and Health: Profile and Tribute to the Life and Work of James Kay (1954-2004)

by Martin Bunch

Waltner-Toews, D., M. J. Bunch, et al. (2004). "Championing Ecosystem Sustainability and Health: Profile and Tribute to the Life and Work of James Kay (1954–2004)." EcoHealth 1(4): 334-339.

The past decade has seen considerable developments in the integrated study of ecosystem sustainability and health.... more The past decade has seen considerable developments in the integrated study of ecosystem sustainability and health. Important developments in theory, methods, and application of this area have emerged from the work of key individuals and informal, multidisciplinary networks of peers working across continents and countries and based in governments, universities, and private organizations. This profile focuses in particular on the critical influence of James Kay as a key advocate and intellectual champion for incorporating complexity and uncertainty into the "Ecosystem approach." The intent is to provide an overview of an important era in the application of this approach to address health and sustainability concerns and to highlight the frameworks, methods, and networks that have emerged as collective acknowledgments to the life and work of James Kay (1954–2004).

UK National Health Service information systems implementation: Emergence of and in informal groups

by Amila S. Wilegoda-Wickramage

Power and Conflict in Adaptive Management: Analyzing the Discourse of Riparian Management on Public Lands

by Jennifer Arnold

Adaptive collaborative management emphasizes stakeholder engagement as a crucial component of resilient... more Adaptive collaborative management emphasizes stakeholder engagement as a crucial component of resilient social-ecological systems. Collaboration among diverse stakeholders is expected to enhance learning, build social legitimacy for decision making, and establish relationships that support learning and adaptation in the long term. However, simply bringing together diverse stakeholders does not guarantee productive engagement. Using critical discourse analysis, we examined how diverse stakeholders negotiated knowledge and power in a workshop designed to inform adaptive management of riparian livestock grazing on a National Forest in the southwestern USA. Publicly recognized as a successful component of a larger collaborative effort, we found that the workshop effectively brought together diverse participants, yet still restricted dialogue in important ways. Notably, workshop facilitators took on the additional roles of riparian experts and instructors. As they guided workshop participants toward a consensus view of riparian conditions and management recommendations, they used their status as riparian experts to emphasize commonalities with stakeholders supportive of riparian grazing and accentuate differences with stakeholders skeptical of riparian grazing, including some Forest Service staff with power to influence management decisions. Ultimately, the management plan published one year later did not fully adopt the consensus view from the workshop, but rather included and acknowledged a broader diversity of stakeholder perspectives. Our findings suggest that leaders and facilitators of adaptive collaborative management can more effectively manage for productive stakeholder engagement and, thus, socialecological
resilience if they are more tentative in their convictions, more critical of the role of expert knowledge, and more
attentive to the knowledge, interests, and power of diverse stakeholders.

A Review of the Maritime Container Shipping Industry as a Complex Adaptive System

by Simone Caschili

Co-authored with Francesca Romana Medda

If we consider the worldwide maritime shipping industry as a system, we observe that a large number of independent... more If we consider the worldwide maritime shipping industry as a system, we observe that a large number of independent rational agents such as port authorities, shipping service providers, shipping companies, and commodity producers play a role in achieving predominant positions and in increasing market share. The maritime shipping industry can, from this perspective, be defined as a Complex System composed of relatively independent parts that constantly search, learn and adapt to their environment, while their mutual interactions shape obscure but recognizable patterns. In this work we examine the maritime shipping industry through the Complex Adaptive System (CAS). Although CAS has been applied widely to the study of biological and social systems, its application in maritime shipping is scant. Therefore, our objective in the present paper is to provide a literature review that examines the international maritime industry through the lens of CAS. We also present some of the goals that may be achieved by applying the CAS approach to the container shipping industry in particular. The construction of a tenable ontological framework will give scholars a comprehensive view of the maritime industry and allow them to test the stability and efficiency of the framework to endogenous and exogenous shocks.

RESPONSES OF AGRICULTURAL BIOENERGY PRODUCTION IN BRANDENBURG TO ECOLOGICAL, ECONOMIC AND LEGAL CHANGES: AN APPLICATION OF …

by Melf-Hinrich Ehlers

Looking for the Future in the Past: Long-Term Change in Socioecological Systems

by Isaac Ullah

Accepted for publication by Ecological Modeling, Feb., 2012.

Authors: C. Michael Barton, Isaac I.T. Ullah, Sean M. Bergin, Helena Mitasova, and Hessam Sarjoughian

This paper is now available as a pre-press online release at the Ec-Mod website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2012.02.010

The archaeological record has been described as a key to the long-term consequences of human action that can help... more The archaeological record has been described as a key to the long-term consequences of human action that can help guide our decisions today. Yet the sparse and incomplete nature of this record often makes it impossible to inferentially reconstruct past societies in sufficient detail for them to serve as more than very general cautionary tales of coupled socio-ecological systems. However, when formal and computational modeling is used to experimentally simulate human socioecological dynamics, the empirical archaeological record can be used to validate and improve dynamic models of long term change. In this way, knowledge generated by archaeology can play a unique and valuable role in developing the tools to make more informed decisions that will shape our future. The Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics project offers an example of using the past to develop and test computational models of interactions between land-use and landscape evolution that ultimately may help guide decision-making.

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by Damir Ibrisimovic

New Physics - draft 1.0

Diálogo entre design e emergência: o metadesign como estratégia projetual para problemas de alta complexidade na área de design

by Rui Alão

publicado no DAMT do programa de mestrado em design da Universidade Anhembi Morumbi

Este artigo visa colocar algumas possibilidades de abordagem
dos fenômenos emergentes no contexto da pesquisa e... more Este artigo visa colocar algumas possibilidades de abordagem
dos fenômenos emergentes no contexto da pesquisa e da prática
do design, trazendo um conceito de projeto que valoriza as
abordagens bottom-up em conjunto com as técnicas projetuais
tradicionais, caracteristicamente top-down. As propostas da
aplicação de técnicas de metadesign são tratadas e colocadas
como possibilidade de estratégia na abordagem de problemas de
alta complexidade na área do design.

Spatially Realistic Positioning of Plants for Virtual Environments: Simple Biotic and Abiotic Interaction for Populating Terrains

by Eugene Ch'ng

Published IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (Final Unformatted Manuscript shown)

Creating natural forest landscapes for virtual environments require some basic knowledge of botany and ecology,... more Creating natural forest landscapes for virtual environments require some basic knowledge of botany and ecology, without which the terrain may appear synthetic. While tools such as scene editors have made a designer’s job easier, manually creating a natural-looking landscape is time consuming and, depending on the knowledge the artist possesses, often do not follow the principles of ecology and spatially viable plant positioning. This research attempts to study how lessons from ecological modelling can be adopted for growing vegetation as ground cover for outdoor scenes of virtual worlds. The algorithms presented attempt to simulate ecologically and spatially realistic placement of plants, from which the XML-based position data can be used for populating other 2D and 3D virtual worlds. The simulation results show the potentials of such a venture in future more complex developments, such as real-time plant growth and state changes in virtual environments.

A Behavioural Agent Model for Synthesising Vegetation Distribution Patterns on 3D Terrains

by Eugene Ch'ng

Applied AI.

Vegetations, similar to other organisms, persist on terrains based on niches of their abiotic and biotic environments.... more Vegetations, similar to other organisms, persist on terrains based on niches of their abiotic and biotic environments. Agent-based models of vegetation have demonstrated that, via the process of macro self-organisation, are capable of forming forests and undergrowth by means of their behaviour and the resources available in the ecosystem. In order to more accurately synthesise their collective behaviour, a set of rules encompassing basic vegetation behaviour were defined to enable realistic patterns to be formed locally via interaction and extra-locally via emergence in accord with their preferences in various controlled environments. Furthermore, the use of botanical parameters fine-tuned and regulated via simple rules could, in the near future, become a potential model for determining large-scale spatial and temporal distribution of dominant vegetation species, enhancing traditional methods and visualisation in studies related to forest dynamics and research in landscape reconstruction.

AN EFFICIENT SEGMENTATION ALGORITHM FOR ENTITY INTERACTION

by Eugene Ch'ng

artificial life, entity interaction, individual-based model, optimisation algorithms,
segmentation

The inventorying of biological diversity and studies in biocomplexity require the management of large electronic... more The inventorying of biological diversity and studies in biocomplexity require the management of large electronic datasets of organisms. While species inventory has adopted
structured electronic databases for some time, the computer modelling of the functional interactions between biological entities at all levels of life is still in the stage of development. One of the challenges for this type of modelling is the biotic interactions that occur between large datasets of entities represented as computer algorithms. In real-time simulation that models the biotic interactions of large population datasets, the use of computational processing time could be extensive. One way of increasing the efficiency of such simulation is to partition the landscape so that entities need only traverse its local space for entities that falls within the interaction proximity. This article presents an efficient segmentation algorithm for biotic interactions for research related to the modelling and simulation of biological systems.

An Artificial Life-Based Vegetation Modelling Approach for Biodiversity Research

by Eugene Ch'ng

vegetation distribution modelling and simulation, biodiversity informatics,
artificial life, bottom-up approach, emergence

The complexity of nature can only be solved by nature’s intrinsic problem-solving approach. Therefore, the... more The complexity of nature can only be solved by nature’s intrinsic problem-solving approach. Therefore, the computational modelling of nature requires careful observations of its underlying principles in order that these laws can be abstracted into formulas suitable for the algorithmic configuration. This chapter proposes a novel modelling approach for biodiversity informatics research. The approach is based on the emergence phenomenon for predicting vegetation distribution patterns in a multi-variable ecosystem where Artificial Lifebased vegetation grow, compete, adapt, reproduce and conquer plots of landscape in order to survive their generation. The feasibility of the modelling approach presented in this chapter may provide a firm foundation not only for predicting vegetation distribution in a wide variety of landscapes, but could also be extended for studying biodiversity and the loss of animal species for sustainable management of resources.