The EmergeNET network promotes interest in complex systems and emergence by bringing together established researchers, those new to the area, and the public. EmergeNET4 was the fourth workshop in the network series.
EmergeNET4: Engineering Emergence, provided a forum for discussing all aspects of the engineering of emergence in complex systems. Complex systems are characterised by low-level components that communicate and interact with and within an environment, resulting in the emergence of high-level system behaviours. Complex systems are often designed to help understand emergence or to exploit emergent behaviours to help solve problems in the real world. Emergent behaviours are by definition a function of the system rather than any individual component, which makes the engineering of these behaviours a non-trivial activity. Engineering of emergence covers, amongst other aspects, abstract modelling (in diagrams or mathematics), simulation in hardware or software, verification and validation, and engineering tools, techniques and workflows.
This two-day workshop at York was a combination of keynote speakers, oral presentations, and discussion sessions to explore in depth the ideas of Engineering Emergence.
The EmergeNET4 workshop was held in the centre of the city of York, UK, at St William's College on the 19th and 20th of April 2010.
Call informationThe workshop was run as part of the EmergeNET network, in collaboration with the Non-Standard Computation Group, Department of Computer Science, and the York Centre for Complex Systems Analysis, at the University of York
There will later be an open call to submit a technical paper, that will be peer reviewed, for a postproceedings special issue on "Engineering Emergence" of the journal Natural Computing.