2010
Volume 10, Number 1, p.p. 16–23
Automatic characterization of emergent phenomena in complex systems
Thomas Moncion,1, 2 Patrick Amar1 and Guillaume Hutzler2, *
1 LRI, UMR 8623, CNRS/Université Paris-Sud 11, Bât. 490, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
2 IBISC, EA 4526, Evry University, 523 Place des Terrasses, 91000 Evry, France
One of the main characteristics of complex systems is that the interrelations between the entities composing the system are not permanently established but evolve in time. As opposed to complicated systems, the structure of complex systems also evolves in a dynamic organizational process. When studying complex systems, self-organization and emergent phenomena must therefore be taken into account and studied carefully. In this paper, we propose to provide tools in order to automatically detect and characterize the emergent phenomena occurring in agent-based simulations. To this end, we consider interactions between the entities at the lower level as the main organizational forces shaping the structure of the system at a higher level. These interactions are detected during the simulation and represented as dynamic graphs. Measures can then be made on various properties of the graph so as to detect the occurrence of structuring processes. Group detection and tracking techniques are then introduced so as to characterize more precisely the exact nature of these processes.