There exists a widely recognized need to better understand

and manage complex “systems of systems,” ranging from

biology, ecology, and medicine to network-centric technologies.

This is motivating the search for universal laws of highly evolved

systems and driving demand for new mathematics and methods

that are consistent, integrative, and predictive. However, the theoretical

frameworks available today are not merely fragmented

but sometimes contradictory and incompatible. We argue that

complexity arises in highly evolved biological and technological

systems primarily to provide mechanisms to create robustness.

However, this complexity itself can be a source of new fragility,

leading to “robust yet fragile” tradeoffs in system design. We

focus on the role of robustness and architecture in networked

infrastructures, and we highlight recent advances in the theory

of distributed control driven by network technologies. This view

of complexity in highly organized technological and biological systems

is fundamentally different from the dominant perspective in

the mainstream sciences, which downplays function, constraints,

and tradeoffs, and tends to minimize the role of organization and

design

Alderson, David L.

Doyle, John C.

English

David L. Alderson

John C. Doyle

Crossref

Contrasting Views of Complexity and Their Implications For Network-Centric Infrastructures

Caltech Authors - Main

IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics-Part AThe article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TSMCA.2010.2048027There exists a widely recognized need to better understand and manage complex "systems of systems", ranging from biology, ecology, and medicine to network-centric technologies. This is motivating the search for universal laws of highly evolved systems and driving demand for new mathematics and methods that are consistent, integrative, and predictive. However, the theoretical frameworks available today are not merely fragmented but sometimes contradictory and incompatible. We argue that complexity arises in highly evolved biological and technological systems primarily to provide mechanisms to create robustness. However, this complexity itself can be a source of new fragility, leading to “robust yet fragile” tradeoffs in system design. We focus on the role of robustness and architecture in networked infrastructures, and we highlight recent advances in the theory of distributed control driven by network technologies. This view of complexity in highly organized technological and biological systems is fundamentally different from the dominant perspective in the mainstream sciences, which downplays function, constraints, and tradeoffs, and tends to minimize the role of organization and design

Doyle, J.C.

Alderson, D.L.

Calhoun, Institutional Archive of the Naval Postgraduate School

Contrasting Views of Complexity and Their Implications for Network-Centric Infrastructures

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http://authors.library.caltech.edu/18978/1/Alderson2010p10586Ieee_T_Syst_Man_Cy_A.pdf

Contrasting Views of Complexity and Their Implications For Network-Centric Infrastructures

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