163 research outputs found
Self-organization in Communicating Groups: the emergence of coordination, shared references and collective intelligence\ud
The present paper will sketch the basic ideas of the complexity paradigm, and then apply them to social systems, and in particular to groups of communicating individuals who together need to agree about how to tackle some problem or how to coordinate their actions. I will elaborate these concepts to provide an integrated foundation for a theory of self-organization, to be understood as a non-linear process of spontaneous coordination between actions. Such coordination will be shown to consist of the following components: alignment, division of labor, workflow and aggregation. I will then review some paradigmatic simulations and experiments that illustrate the alignment of references and communicative conventions between communicating agents. Finally, the paper will summarize the preliminary results of a series of experiments that I devised in order to observe the emergence of collective intelligence within a communicating group, and interpret these observations in terms of alignment, division of labor and workflow
Assessing Interaction Networks with Applications to Catastrophe Dynamics and Disaster Management
In this paper we present a versatile method for the investigation of
interaction networks and show how to use it to assess effects of indirect
interactions and feedback loops. The method allows to evaluate the impact of
optimization measures or failures on the system. Here, we will apply it to the
investigation of catastrophes, in particular to the temporal development of
disasters (catastrophe dynamics). The mathematical methods are related to the
master equation, which allows the application of well-known solution methods.
We will also indicate connections of disaster management with excitable media
and supply networks. This facilitates to study the effects of measures taken by
the emergency management or the local operation units. With a fictious, but
more or less realistic example of a spreading epidemic disease or a wave of
influenza, we illustrate how this method can, in principle, provide decision
support to the emergency management during such a disaster. Similar
considerations may help to assess measures to fight the SARS epidemics,
although immunization is presently not possible
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