Emergent Behavior in Complex Systems Engineering

Emergent Behavior in Complex Systems Engineering A Modeling and Simulation Approach

Editors Saurabh Mittal, PhD Saikou Diallo, PhD Andreas Tolk, PhD

March 30, 2018 © Wiley & Sons

Preface We are surrounded by emergence. Human civilization transformed through significant periods starting from the hunter-gatherer era, through the agricultural period, to the industrial age, and now the information and digital age. Each period emerges from the previous over time not only through technological advances and economic progress, but also through conflicts, war, and transformative political and social changes. What qualifies a period in history as an “era?” How does an era start, and why does it end? Among the many reasons we have listed above, it is important to emphasize the impact of technology on society and the role technological revolutions (Industrial revolution, Internet, etc.) play in shaping the direction of Humanity. Having said that, we are not completely sure how era-changing technologies come into being and are mostly unable to predict which technologies will change civilization, and which will go unnoticed. We can only observe that when a new technology appears, it is sometimes met with skepticism, mockery, ridicule, and denial. Such reactions are often due to the lack of understanding of the technology and its implications. However, some technologies – once created - add tremendous knowledge and insight while spawning new industries, disciplines and ecosystems that generate new professions and a new workforce thus bringing about a new societal structure that can cope with the new technology. Some technologies are so disruptive and life changing that they mark the beginning of a new era. Wouldn’t it be desirable to better understand technologies that have the potential for such large-scale emergence, or maybe even be able to predict and manage the consequent emergence? Might Isaac Asimov’s vision of Hari Seldon’s Psychohistory become a reality? Are we on the cusp of the emergence of a new era? Beyond societal emergence, engineered systems capable of displaying emergent behavior are entering our daily routines at a high rate. For instance, there is currently an increasing number of unmanned system technology being applied in a wide variety of domains. Robots are conducting surgeries; we see selfdriving cars maturing; packages are delivered by drones, and unmanned systems show up on the battlefield. These unmanned systems observe their environment, compare the perceived situation with their goals, and then follow rules sets to achieve their objectives. Even relatively simple rules can lead to very complex swarm behavior, exposing emergent behavior beyond the intention of the designers. If this behavior is helpful in reaching their planned objective, all is good, but where is the threshold for such behavior to become dangerous or even harmful? How can we better recognize unintended consequences, which may easily be magnified due to the many and often non-linear connections between the components? How can we ensure that such unmanned solutions evolve into a favorable direction, and not like James Cameron’s Skynet into an existential threat for society? It is such questions and ideas that have motivated us to work on this book. We want to understand the world as a complex system and to gain some semblance of control as we inject more and more engineered systems in this existing complex system. We want to answer questions such as: Is emergence systemic, or can we reduce or even eliminate it as we gain enough knowledge about the system, its components and relations? Do we need better tools and methods to study emergence? We strive to bring together the discipline of complex systems engineering that needs to incorporate the element of complexity, inherent in the very structure of a system and the elements of emergent behavior that complex system engineering could never design in the first place but still needs to account for. To this end, we are particularly interested in exploring the subject of emergence through the lens of Modeling and Simulation (M&S). Modeling is the art of simplification and abstraction, taking only “so

much” from reality to answer the question put forth at the right abstraction level. Simulation is the increasingly computerized execution of a model over time to understand its dynamic behavior. Such computational means are potent tools that allow scientists and engineers to hypothesize, design, analyze, and even theorize about a particular phenomenon. Can we recreate emergence in such artificial systems in a way that helps us understand emergence in the real system of interest better? What are the limits of such M&S support? Furthermore, M&S supports scientist in social sciences with powerful tools, such as agent based simulation systems which are increasingly used in support of computational social science. How can we gain insight regarding the natural system by evaluation such simulations? Can we explore all types of emergence currently discussed by philosophers as well as engineers, or are there limitations and constraints computational scientists need to be aware of? The goal of this book is to provide an overview of the current discussions on complexity and emergence, and how systems engineering methods in general and simulation methods in particular can help in gaining new insight and support users of complex systems in providing better governance. The book is organized into 16 invited chapters in four sections, providing an overview of philosophical, model engineering, computational methods using simulation, and research specific viewpoints. The topics addressed in the chapters reflect the different viewpoints on emergence and discuss why we shouldn’t rule it out; whether complex systems can be engineered; whether all complex systems can be reduced to complicated systems if we increase our knowledge; how simulation can help to better understand and manage emergence; and what role can system thinking play in understanding emergence? The authors provide a wide variety of approaches to studying emergence ranging from formal system specification that account for emergence, deriving factors from observations of emergence in physics and chemistry, the emergence of language between two hominid agents in a resource-constrained system and looking at emergence in complex enterprises. The editors conclude the book with observations on a possible research agenda to address some of the grand challenges the complex systems engineering community must consider. This book is a diverse collection of contributions from a broad background of recognized experts in their field highlighting aspects of complexity and emergence important from their viewpoint. By bringing them together in one compendium, we hope to spawn a discussion on new methods and tools needed to address the challenges of complexity that obviously go beyond the limits of traditional approaches.

Saurabh Mittal, Herndon, VA Saikou Diallo, Suffolk, VA Andreas Tolk, Hampton, VA September 2017

Table of Contents Foreword Preface About the Editors List of Contributors Section I: Emergent Behavior in Complex Systems 1. Metaphysical and scientific accounts of emergence: Varieties of fundamentality and theoretical completeness John Symons 2. Emergence: What does it mean and how is it relevant to Computer Engineering? Wesley J. Wildman and F. LeRon Shults 3. System theoretic foundations for emergent behavior modeling: The case of emergence of Human Language in a resource-constrained complex intelligent dynamical system Bernard P. Zeigler and Saurabh Mittal 4. Generative Parallax Simulation: Creative cognition models of emergence for simulation-driven model discovery Levent Yilmaz Section II: Emergent Behavior Modeling in Complex Systems Engineering 5. Complex Systems Engineering and the Challenge of Emergence Andreas Tolk, Saikou Diallo and Saurabh Mittal 6. Emergence in Complex Enterprises William Rouse 7. Emergence in information economies: An agent-based modeling perspective Erika Frydenlund and David C. Earnest 8. Modeling emergence in System of Systems using thermodynamic concepts John J. Johnson IV, Jose J. Padilla and Andres Sousa-Poza 9. Induced emergence in computational social systems engineering: Multimodels and dynamic couplings as methodological basis Tuncer Ören, Saurabh Mittal and Umut Durak 10. Applied Complexity Science: Enabling emergence through heuristics and simulations Michael D. Norman, Matthew T. K. Koehler and Rob Pitsko

Section III: Engineering Emergent Behavior in Computational Environments 11. Towards the automated detection of emergent behavior Claudia Szabo and Lachlan Birdsey 12. Isolating the causes of emergent failures in computer software Ross Gore 13. From modularity to complexity: A cross-disciplinary framework for characterizing systems Chih-Chun Chen and Nathan Crilly 14. The emergence of social schemas and lossy conceptual information networks: How information transmission can lead to the apparent “emergence” of culture Justin E. Lane 15. Modeling and Simulation of emergence behavior in transportation infrastructure restoration Akhilesh Ojha, Steven Corns, Thomas Shoberg, Ruwen Qin and Suzanna Long Section IV: Research Agenda 16. Research Agenda for Next Generation Complex Systems Engineering Saikou Diallo, Saurabh Mittal and Andreas Tolk