Complex Adaptive Systems

This book explains the role of human behavior research, from both a historical and modern perspective, in improving objective, measurable performance outcomes to include safety, strategic decision making, and organizational performance. The book builds upon empirically supported foundations of human cognition, but with a focus on applying this knowledge in a manner that can improve human decision-making to enhance safety and performance. It includes explanations of how the human mind processes information, including differences in novice versus expert information processing, and tools to combat various cognitive biases. Explained within the framework of complex adaptive systems, this book builds upon resources developed through the author’s years of combined applied research and graduate teaching and includes chapters on the roles of uncertainty and complexity within scientific research. Finally, the book offers tools that are rooted in empirical research and demonstrated within the context of contemporary, real-world scenarios, with a focus on improving organizational effectiveness through improved strategic decision making and the development of learning cultures within organizations.

An introduction to the new science of complex adaptive systems

This book presents the latest research on switching control, adaptive switching control, and their applications in the transient stability control and analysis of large-scale complex power systems. In large-scale complex power systems, renewable power generators, flexible power electronics converters, and distributed controllers are widely employed. Due to the poor overcurrent tolerance capability of power electronics converters and lacking of coordination mechanism, stability control in events, such as natural disasters, cascaded faults, and severe disturbances, is viewed as the key challenge in the operation of these systems. High-performance self-coordinated controllers are needed for the control of important power sources and power electronics converters. Adaptive switching controllers are a group of controllers designed by the authors for the control of various renewable power generators, synchronous generators, and modular multilevel converters.

This book emerged out of international conferences organized as part of the AAAI Fall Symposia series, and the Swarmfest 2017 conference. It brings together researchers from diverse fields studying these complex systems using CAS and agent-based modeling tools and techniques. In the past, the knowledge gained in each domain has largely remained exclusive to that domain. By bringing together scholars who study these phenomena, the book takes knowledge from one domain to provide insight into others.