CoSMoS 2008

In recent years the concept of emergence has gained much attention as computer systems have started exhibiting properties usually associated with complex systems. Although emergence creates many problems for engineering complex computerized systems by introducing undesired behaviour, it also offers many possibilities for advancements in the area of adaptive self-organizing systems. However, at the moment, the inability to predict and control emergent phenomena prevents us from exploring its full potential or avoiding problems in existing complex systems. Towards this end, this paper proposes a framework for structured empirical study of complex systems exhibiting emergence. The framework relies on agent-oriented modelling and simulation as a tool for examination of specific manifestations of emergence. The main idea is to use an iterative simulation process in order to build a coarse taxonomy of causal relations between the micro and the macro layers. In addition to detailed description of the framework, the paper also elaborates different aspects of ongoing work on herd dynamics case study.