Complex Adaptive Systems

Dear Colleagues,

The world around us is getting more complex by the minute, exacerbated by the ever-changing dynamic connectivity patterns of the network of actors, organizations, states, policies, technologies, and interventions. Simulating and modelling such networks using the complex adaptive systems and agent-based modelling paradigms is critical to our ability to maintain, manage, sustain, evaluate, and improve systems.

However, we do not have the right tools for such a task. Simple platforms available today allow for rapid prototyping, but are inadequate for developing and deploying professional class solutions. The tools of the future will enable the end user to design, implement, run, analyze, test, evaluate, validate, and visualize the system and its outcomes.

However, before we can do that, we will have to develop theories that shed more light on the process of complex adaptive system definition, system evaluation, hierarchical system representation, dynamical change of the system over time, system’s representation as a dynamical network, sensitivity analysis, sensory inputs, near-real time simulation, and system verification and validation.

There are still no “killer-applications” of complex adaptive systems and agent-based modelling. There are also very few social, economic, or other policies that have been successfully implemented in the real world after being suggested by a complex adaptive system simulation. Why is that? What is it that is preventing complex adaptive systems to gain a wide-range adoption by the businesses and governments?

These and related questions are the topics of this Special Issue on “Complex Adaptive Systems”. Authors are invited to submit a paper on one or more of the areas described above. A sample, but not exhaustive, list of potential topics of interest includes:

• Complex adaptive systems
• Agent-based modelling and simulation
• Evaluation, verification, and validation of agent-based models
• Dynamical behavior of systems
• Relationship between complex adaptive systems and network science
• Hierarchical complex adaptive systems
• Policy evaluations and recommendations
• Sensitivity analysis
• Visualization
• Programming environments
• Tools building
• Automated design of agent-based models
• Human-system interaction
• Real-time simulations
• Embedded complex systems
• Implementations of complex adaptive systems in various application domains
• Designing minimal systems
• Big data and complex adaptive systems
• Deep learning and complex adaptive systems

Prof. Dr. Mirsad Hadzikadic
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Systems is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.