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.

Environmental Governance for the Anthropocene? Social-Ecological Systems, Resilience, and Collaborative Learning

Abstract: The Anthropocene is characterized by rapid global change, necessitating adaptive governance. But how can such adaptive governance be operationalized? The article offers a three-point argument to approach this question. First, people and environment need to be considered together, as social (human) and ecological (biophysical) subsystems are linked by mutual feedbacks, and are interdependent and co-evolutionary. These integrated systems of humans and environment (social-ecological systems) provide an appropriate unit of analysis. Second, the resilience approach deals with change in multilevel complex systems, and has stimulated much of the adaptive governance literature by addressing uncertainty and adaptation to unforeseen future changes. Third, there is a need to foster collaborative approaches to improve social and institutional learning, as for example in adaptive management, collaborative learning networks, and knowledge co-production. Collaborative learning is perhaps where further research, experimentation, and application might make a difference for operationalizing adaptive governance, with a focus on institutions, at all levels from local to international.

Network structure and institutional complexity in an ecology of water management games

Abstract: Social-ecological systems are governed by a complex of ecology of games featuring multiple actors, policy institutions, and issues, and not just single institutions operating in isolation. We update Long's (1958) ecology of games to analyze the coordinating roles of actors and institutions in the context of the ecology of water management games in San Francisco Bay, California. The ecology of games is operationalized as a bipartite network with actors participating in institutions, and exponential random graph models are used to test hypotheses about the structural features of the network. We found that policy coordination is facilitated mostly by federal and state agencies and collaborative institutions that span geographic boundaries. Network configurations associated with closure show the most significant departures from the predicted model values, consistent with the Berardo and Scholz (2010) "risk hypothesis" that closure is important for solving cooperation problems.

Complex Economics: Individual and Collective Rationality

Abstract: The economic crisis is also a crisis for economic theory. Most analyses of the evolution of the crisis invoke three themes, contagion, networks and trust, yet none of these play a major role in standard macroeconomic models. What is needed is a theory in which these aspects are central. The direct interaction between individuals, firms and banks does not simply produce imperfections in the functioning of the economy but is the very basis of the functioning of a modern economy. This book suggests a way of analysing the economy which takes this point of view. The economy should be considered as a complex adaptive system in which the agents constantly react to, influence and are influenced by, the other individuals in the economy. In such systems which are familiar from statistical physics and biology for example, the behaviour of the aggregate cannot be deduced from the behaviour of the average, or "representative" individual. Just as the organised activity of an ants' nest cannot be understood from the behaviour of a "representative ant" so macroeconomic phenomena should not be assimilated to those associated with the "representative agent". This book provides examples where this can clearly be seen. The examples range from Schelling's model of segregation, to contributions to public goods, the evolution of buyer seller relations in fish markets, to financial models based on the foraging behaviour of ants. The message of the book is that coordination rather than efficiency is the central problem in economics. How do the myriads of individual choices and decisions come to be coordinated? How does the economy or a market, "self organise" and how does this sometimes result in major upheavals, or to use the phrase from physics, "phase transitions"? The sort of system described in this book is not in equilibrium in the standard sense, it is constantly changing and moving from state to state and its very structure is always being modified. The economy is not a ship sailing on a well-defined trajectory which occasionally gets knocked off course. It is more like the slime described in the book "emergence", constantly reorganising itself so as to slide collectively in directions which are neither understood nor necessarily desired by its components.

Managing Forests as Complex Adaptive Systems : Building Resilience to the Challenge of Global Change

Abstract: Managing forests as complex adaptive systems / Klaus J Puettmann -- An introduction to complexity science / Lael Parrott -- Tropical forests as complex adaptive systems / Robin l. Chazdon -- Complexity in temperate forest dynamics / Sybille Haeussler -- Exploring complexity in boreal forests / Philip J. Burton -- Forest restoration in a changing world / Meredith Cornett -- Meta-networks of fungi, fauna and flora as agents of complex adaptive systems / Suzanne Simard -- Complexity confronting tropical silviculturists / Francis Putz -- Is close-to-nature forest management in Europe compatible with managing forests as complex adaptive forest ecosystems? / Jurgen Bauhus -- Mediterranean forests:human use and complex adaptive systems / Susanna Nocentini -- Fennoscandian boreal forests as complex adaptive systems / Timo Kuuluvainen -- Management of Tasmanian eucalypt forests as complex adaptive systems / Sue Baker -- Managing tree plantations as complex adaptive systems / Alain Paquette -- A new integrative framework for understanding and managing the world forest / Christian Messier.