Recent advances in information and communications technology have led to a surge
in the popularity of artificial Collective Adaptive Systems (CAS). Such systems, comprised
by many spatially distributed autonomous entities with decentralised control,
can often achieve discernible characteristics at the global level; a phenomenon sometimes
termed emergence. Examples include smart transport systems, smart electricity
power grids, robot swarms, etc. The design and operational management of CAS are
of vital importance because different configurations of CAS may exhibit very large
variability in their performance and the quality of services they offer. However, due to
their complexity caused by varying degrees of behaviour, large system scale and highly
distributed nature, it is often very difficult to understand and predict the behaviour of
CAS under different situations. Novel modelling and quantitative analysis methodologies
are therefore required to address the challenges posed by the complexity of such
systems.
In this thesis, we develop a process algebraic modelling formalism that can be used
to express complex dynamic behaviour of CAS and provide fast and scalable analysis
techniques to investigate the dynamic behaviour and support the design and operational
management of such systems. The major contributions of this thesis are:
(i) development of a novel high-level formalism, PALOMA, the Process Algebra
for Located Markovian Agents for the modelling of CAS. CAS specified in PALOMA
can be automatically translated to their underlying mathematical models called Population
Continuous-Time Markov Chains (PCTMCs).
(ii) development of an automatic moment-closure approximation method which
can provide rapid Ordinary Differential Equation-based analysis of PALOMA models.
(iii) development of an automatic model reduction algorithm for the speed up of
stochastic simulation of PALOMA/PCTMC models.
(iv) presenting a case study, predicting bike availability in stations of Santander
Cycles, the public bike-sharing system in London, to show that our techniques are
well-suited for analysing real CAS