Books in the Understanding Complex Systems series

This book introduces and reviews recent advances inthe field in a comprehensive and non-technical way by focusing on the potentialof emerging citizen-science and social-computation frameworks, coupled with thelatest theoretical and modeling tools developed by physicists, mathematicians,computer and social scientists to analyse, interpret and visualize complex datasets.There is overwhelming evidence that the currentorganisation of our economies and societies is seriously damaging biologicalecosystems and human living conditions in the short term, with potentiallycatastrophic effects in the long term. The need to re-organise the dailyactivities with the greatest impact ¿ energy consumption, transport, housing ¿towards a more efficient and sustainable development model has recently beenraised in the public debate on several global, environmental issues. Above all,this requires the mismatch between global, societal and individual needs to beaddressed. Recent advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)can trigger important transitions at the individual and collective level toachieve this aim.Based on the findings of the collaborative researchnetwork EveryAware the following developments among the emerging ICTtechnologies are discussed in depth in this volume:¿ Participatory sensing ¿ where ICT development ispushed to the level where it can supportinformed action at the hyperlocal scale, providing capabilities forenvironmental monitoring, data aggregation and mining, as well as informationpresentation and sharing.¿ Web gaming, social computing and internet-mediatedcollaboration ¿ where the Web will continue to acquire the status of aninfrastructure for social computing, allowing users¿ cognitive abilities to becoordinated in online communities, and steering the collective action towardspredefined goals.¿ Collective awareness and decision-making ¿ where theaccess to both personal and community data, collected by users, processed withsuitable analysis tools, and re-presented in an appropriate format by usablecommunication interfaces leads to a bottom-up development of collective socialstrategies.

Rather than focusing on complexity as often discussed in physics or computer science, this book examines more 'human' or socially oriented perspectives on complexity, taking account of the language and communication singularities of human agents in society.

In this book, experts from biology, physics and the social sciences examine the unification of all design phenomena in nature and apply this knowledge to designs in engineering, such as vascularization for self-healing and self-cooling materials for aircraft.

This book, edited and authored by a closely collaborating network of social scientists and psychologists, recasts typical research topics in these fields into the language of nonlinear, dynamic and complex systems.

This book attempts to explain why and how humans behave much like atoms in some aspects of their collective lives. The authors then suggest ways that this knowledge could serve as the key to a dramatic leap forwards in social freedom in the real world.

In this book, the major ideas behind Organic Computing are delineated, together with a sparse sample of computational projects undertaken in this new field. Biological metaphors include evolution, neural networks, gene-regulatory networks, networks of brain modules, hormone system, insect swarms, and ant colonies.

Title is included in the Springer Complexity programme.

This topical volume, based on the findings of the Socionical European research project, gives equal attention to two highly relevant domains of applications: transport, specifically traffic, dynamics from the viewpoint of a socio-technical interaction and evacuation scenarios for large-scale emergency situations.

This book provides serious readers with a serious scientific tool that will enable them to actually perform a competitive research in modern complex nonlinearity. It includes a comprehensive bibliography on the subject and a detailed index.

Topics that are treated include: interactive continuation tools, higher-dimensional continuation, the computation of invariant manifolds, and continuation techniques for slow-fast systems, for symmetric Hamiltonian systems, for spatially extended systems and for systems with delay.

The science of graphs and networks is now an established tool for modeling and analyzing systems with a large number of interacting components. The contributions to this anthology address different aspects of the relationship between innovation and networks.

The present monograph develops a versatile and profound mathematical perspective of the Wright--Fisher model of population genetics. This well-known and intensively studied model carries a rich and beautiful mathematical structure, which is uncovered here in a systematic manner.

This book provides the state-of-the art of the present understanding of avalanche phenomena in both functional materials and geophysics.

Special topics reflecting the active research in the field are the analysis and control of chimera states in classical networks and in quantum systems, the mathematical treatment of multiscale systems, the control of colloidal and quantum transport, the control of epidemics and of neural network dynamics.

This book offers an analytical framework based on activity theory, showing how systems thinking evolves and how it can support multidisciplinary teamwork in systems development and engineering. Explores WAVES (Work Activity for Evolution of Systems) strategy.

This book provides a general overview of several concepts of synchronization and brings together related approaches to secure communication in chaotic systems.

This text introduces SKIN (Simulation Knowledge Dynamics in Innovation Networks), an agent-based simulation model that primarily focuses on joint knowledge creation and exchange of knowledge in innovation co-operations and networks.

The analysis of recurrences in dynamical systems by using recurrence plots and their quantification is still an emerging field.

Nonlinear Powerflow Control Design presents an innovative control system design process. The text compares the value of different energy resources, presents a new tool for power flow control, and examines the human factors involved with selling power into a distributed, decentralized electric power grid.

Social simulation is the study of natural and artificial society-like structures through the use of computational tools. This handbook comprehensively covers methodology, mechanisms and simulation tools. It also provides an introduction and extensive glossary.

The overall aim of this book, an outcome of the European FP7 FET Open NESS project, is to contribute to the ongoing effort to put the quantitative social sciences on a proper footing for the 21st century. A key focus is economics, and its implications on policy making, where the still dominant traditional approach increasingly struggles to capture the economic realities we observe in the world today - with vested interests getting too often in the way of real advances.Insights into behavioral economics and modern computing techniques have made possible both the integration of larger information sets and the exploration of disequilibrium behavior. The domain-based chapters of this work illustrate how economic theory is the only branch of social sciences which still holds to its old paradigm of an equilibrium science - an assumption that has already been relaxed in all related fields of research in the light of recent advances in complex and dynamical systems theory and related data mining.The other chapters give various takes on policy and decision making in this context. Written in nontechnical style throughout, with a mix of tutorial and essay-like contributions, this book will benefit all researchers, scientists, professionals and practitioners interested in learning about the 'thinking in complexity' to understand how socio-economic systems really work.

This edited volume presents chapters on the dynamics of global climate change and global warming in the Middle East. The audience for this volume includes policy makers, researchers, and students unified by the common goal of making better decisions in the sustainable production and consumption of energy.

It provides a unified view of nonlinear properties in many different systems and highlights many new developments.While volume 1 concentrates on mathematical theory and computational techniques and challenges, which are essential for the study of nonlinear science, this second volume deals with nonlinear excitations in several fields.

Title is included in the Springer Complexity programme.

This book presents the latest tools, techniques, and solutions that decision makers use to overcome the challenges faced by their sustainable supply chains.

This book gives the definitive mathematical answer to what thermodynamics really is: a variational calculus applied to probability distributions. Extending Gibbs's notion of ensemble, the Author imagines the ensemble of all possible probability distributions and assigns probabilities to them by selection rules that are fairly general. The calculus of the most probable distribution in the ensemble produces the entire network of mathematical relationships we recognize as thermodynamics. The first part of the book develops the theory for discrete and continuous distributions while the second part applies this thermodynamic calculus to problems in population balance theory and shows how the emergence of a giant component in aggregation, and the shattering transition in fragmentation may be treated as formal phase transitions.While the book is intended as a research monograph, the material is self-contained and the style sufficiently tutorial to be accessible for self-paced study by an advanced graduate student in such fields as physics, chemistry, and engineering.

This book presents the latest tools, techniques, and solutions that decision makers use to overcome the challenges faced by their sustainable supply chains.