Complex Adaptive Systems and Agent Based Modeling of Industrial Network Growth Chris Davis Igor Nikolic Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management Delft University of Technology The Netherlands wiki.tudelft.nl [email protected] Who am I, and why am I here ? Chris Davis Previously an engineer at Dell ➲ Signal Integrity/Electrical Analysis (cid:122) MSc in Industrial Ecology Thesis on combining Life Cycle Analysis within Agent Based Modeling Currently doing my Doctoral research at TPM / TUDelft, section Energy and Industry I will talk to you about : Complex Adaptive Systems ➲ Industrial Networks ➲ Agent Based Modeling ➲ Take Home (meta)Message The world around is Complex, both the biosphere ➲ and the Technosphere Any activity within both must acknowledge this, or ➲ fail miserably Complex Adaptive Systems is a Meta-Theory, that ➲ gives you a world view and enables cross- disciplinary knowledge sharing. These are very powerful tools to understand / ➲ model the world, but are not mainstream yet. You don't need to understand everything now, but ➲ you will know how to find it, when you need it... Yes, you can fall asleep now... ➲ Defender – Attacker game Lets clear the tables, and stand in a big ➲ circle... Randomly select 2 people : ➲ A: The Defender (cid:122) B: The Attacker (cid:122) You are The Target ! ➲ Move so that you always keep The ➲ Defender between you and The Attacker Source, Eric Bonabeu, http://www.icosystem.com/game.htm ➲ STOP ! The Defender is now the Target ➲ You are The Defender ! ➲ Move so that you keep yourself between ➲ The Attacker and The Target. What the heck just happened ? Take Home Message Simple rules of individual behavior can lead to ➲ surprisingly coherent system level results. Small changes in rules or in the way they are ➲ applied can have significant impact on the system level results. Intuition can be a particularly poor guide to ➲ prediction of the behavior of complex systems above a few levels of complexity (here we have only 3). Simulation is a powerful tool for understanding ➲ the dynamics of complex systems. Source : http://www.icosystem.com/game.htm ➲ Complexity