Special Issue of the Natural Computing journal on "Engineering Emergence"

Submission Deadline: 1st December 2010

naco-emergence@cs.york.ac.uk

The emergence of complex behaviours in the natural world provides inspiration for engineering emergent (computational) systems. This special issue of the Natural Computing journal explores principled approaches to all aspects of engineering emergent properties into natural computational systems.

Emergence in natural systems is characterised by non-trivial high level behaviours that result from low level components interacting with and within an environment. Broadly speaking, computational systems exploit nature inspired emergence in two ways:

  1. Simulations are developed in an attempt to understand emergent properties and their relationship to the natural system as a whole. Importantly, the aim is to engineer the emergence according to plausible underlying mechanisms of the natural system rather than high level mimicry.
  2. Problem solving techniques attempt to exploit emergent properties similar to those expressed by natural systems. An understanding of the emergent behaviour is required in order to engineer the required dynamics into the target computational system.

Emergence is, by definition, a function of a system as a whole rather than any individual component. Traditional engineering techniques, therefore, may require modification when applied to developing emergent computational systems. Such techniques include: modelling tools and techniques, for example diagrams or mathematics; simulations and simulation infrastructures; concurrency and distribution techniques; the process of moving from models to emergent systems; arguing validity of emergent systems; the identification of reusable engineering techniques such as patterns; and working across scientific disciplines.

Papers submitted to this special issue should focus on describing engineering issues and approaches used to examine or exploit emergence in natural computational systems.

Selected topics of interest

Paper Submission

All manuscripts must be prepared according to the publication guidelines of the Natural Computing Journal that can be found at the journal website

Prospective authors are invited to submit their papers using journal submission system selecting "SI: Engineering Emergence" as the article type.

Please notify the guest editors by 31st August 2010 if you intend to submit, providing a title and abstract for your paper. This does not constitute a commitment to submit, but will help facilitate the planning of the special issue.

Manuscripts can be submitted at any time up to, and including, 1st December 2010. When submitting a paper, please email the guest editors with the paper title and author list.

Please use naco-emergence@cs.york.ac.uk for all email contact with the guest editors.

Guest Editors