The World is More Than Complicated
This article discusses the need of complex systems to be adaptive, and various innovative technologies that are required to engineer these systems. Complex adaptive systems consist of several simultaneously interacting parts or components, which are expected to function in an uncertain, complex environment, and to adapt to unforeseeable contingencies. The defining characteristics of complex adaptive systems are that the components are continually changing, the systems involve many interactions among components, and configurations cannot be fully determined in advance. Studies have shown that complex systems of the future will require a multidisciplinary framework—an approach that has been called emergent (complexity) engineering. Emergent engineering designs a system from the bottom-up by designing the individual components and their interactions that can lead to a desired global response. Although significant effort has been devoted to understanding complexity in natural and engineered systems, the research into complex adaptive systems is fragmented and is largely focused on specific examples. In order to accelerate the development of future diverse complex systems, there is a profound need for developing the new multidisciplinary framework of emergent engineering, along with associated systematic approaches, and generally valid methods and tools for high-fidelity simulations of the collective emergent behavior of these systems.