Why are (most) complex systems hierarchical?
What can we learn from their designs?
-- Multi-scale Feedbacks for Complex System Coordination --
Multi-scale structures, or hierarchies, are prevalent in large-scale dynamic systems - from inert matter to living and artificial systems, and systems-of-systems. Why is that? What do these hierarchies have in common? What is transferable across domains? Despite general knowledge and intuition about the benefits of hierarchical designs, a concrete theory for understanding and developing multi-scale systems is still missing.
This presentation provides some initial steps towards such theory. It identifies common design aspects and variants, and synthesises them via a new design pattern-- Multi-Scale Feedbacks. Its purpose is to help design adaptive coordination schemes for large-scale systems. The pattern was distilled from a cross-domain study, including particle physics, molecular biology, neuroscience, insect and human organisations, ecosystems, autonomous control and systems-of-systems. Several simulators are also being developed to help explore and evaluate concrete design hypothesis. Notably, a hierarchical cellular automata simulator allows showing how design parameter variations impact the resulting multi-scale patterns.
This research seeks to correlate multi-scale design variants to qualitative properties, including resilience, stability, reactivity and sensitivity.