Complex adaptive system

About: Complex adaptive system is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3190 publications have been published within this topic receiving 111947 citations. The topic is also known as: Complex adaptive system, CAS.

Infrastructure transitions towards sustainability: a complex adaptive systems perspective

Abstract: To ensure infrastructure assets are procured and maintained by government on behalf of citizens, appropriate policy and institutional architecture are needed, particularly if a fundamental shift to more sustainable infrastructure is the goal. The shift in recent years from competitive and resource-intensive procurement to more collaborative and sustainable approaches to infrastructure governance is considered a major transition in infrastructure procurement systems. In order to better understand this transition in infrastructure procurement arrangements, the concept of emergence from complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory is offered as a key construct. Emergence holds that micro interactions can result in emergent macro order. Applying the concept of emergence to infrastructure procurement, this research examines how interaction of agents in individual projects can result in different industry structural characteristics. The paper concludes that CAS theory, and particularly the concept of ‘emergence’, provides a useful construct to understand infrastructure procurement dynamics and progress towards sustainability.

Applying the “10 Simple Rules” of the Institute of Medicine to Management of Hyperbilirubinemia in Newborns

Abstract: Arecent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report describes a chasm in health care quality that we must cross for patients to receive better care in the 21st century. The report calls for a “systems approach,” drawing on the rapid evolution of knowledge about complex adaptive systems.1 Understanding how complex adaptive systems work can give physicians insights to develop and modify health care systems. By describing a practical application of the ideas about complex adaptive systems to newborn care, we aim to help pediatricians prepare to lead in this field. A complex adaptive system is a collection of individual agents who have the freedom to act, but because the agents are interconnected, action by any agent changes the context for other agents in the system. One familiar example is the buyers in a stock market. In the last century, it was usual to see organizations as mechanical systems: in mechanical systems, if we know what each part of a system does, we can predict perfectly how the whole will respond in a given situation. This is obviously not true of the stock market. A complex adaptive system may display sudden unpredictable shifts in behavior caused by interactions among agents. An essential first step in improving the US health care system is to recognize that its member organizations and individuals, with sublevels nested within and interconnected to each other, make up a complex adaptive system. One of the key attributes of a complex adaptive system is that orderly behavior can emerge among many agents who are acting independently but who share a common drive. For instance, ants, driven to survive, create intricate buildings and foraging systems without any planning by a chief executive ant. So do humans. The citizens of New York City share a drive to eat; with no single individual …

Genetically programmed learning classifier system for complex adaptive system processing with agent-based architecture

Abstract: A system and a method enabling a software agent to learn about its environment, and learn how to perform jobs and tasks. Novel information is assimilated and used in an adaptive manner by the genetically evolving rule set of the agent. The agent learning system communicates with the external environment in an artificial economy through on-line auctions. Internal information also passes through message auctions, that provide chaining of rule execution. The agent continually attempts to automatically improve its performance with respect to fitness for a job.

Interactive computations: toward risk management in interactive intelligent systems

Abstract: Understanding the nature of interactions is regarded as one of the biggest challenges in projects related to complex adaptive systems. We discuss foundations for interactive computations in interactive intelligent systems (IIS), developed in the Wistech program and used for modeling complex systems. We emphasize the key role of risk management in problem solving by IIS. The considerations are based on experience gained in real-life projects concerning, e.g., medical diagnosis and therapy support, control of an unmanned helicopter, fraud detection algorithmic trading or fire commander decision support.

Directionality Theory: Neo-organicism and Dialectical Complexity

Abstract: In this paper I shall examine the evolution of directionality theory expressed as organicist, dialectical approaches to the nature of reality and conclude with an assessment of its newly expressed form, that of complexity theory. In the history of ideas before complexity theory, Hegelian philosophy came closest to providing a systematic, organicist and evolutionary approach to the comprehension of life as a complex adaptive system moving in a particular direction and of knowledge as a conceptual complement of the achievements of self-organised physical and biological evolution. In the work of Murray Bookchin, we find a neo-Hegelian iteration of the directionality thesis expressed as the theory of dialectical naturalism. Beyond Bookchin, in the last few decades we have seen the emergence of new ways of understanding complex systems. Complexity theorists have provided novel insights into the way complex systems evolve and produce increasing states of complexity and diversity. I shall argue that these new in...