It is described an abstract model for the definition and the dynamic evolution of “communities of actants”
originating from a given reference society of roles. Multiple
representations are provided, showing how communities evolve
with respect to their reference societies. In particular we show
how such representations are self-similar and factorisable into
“prime” constituents. An operating model is then introduced
that describes the life-cycle of the communities of actants. After
this a software component is presented—the service-oriented
community—and its features are described in terms of the above
mentioned models. Finally it is shown how such component can
constitute the building block of a novel architecture for the design
of fractal social organizations.
Implementing a Role Based Mutual Assistance Community with Semantic Service D...Vincenzo De Florio
The population of elderly people is increasing rapidly, which
becomes a predominant aspect of our society. For several reasons
so significant a share of the human society is simply regarded as
“retired” – a word condemning the elderly to a reduced
participation in all active life, regardless of their actual
conditions and abilities. In previous work, we discussed how
community resources can be organized in a better way. In
particular we introduced a so-called mutual assistance
community – a digital ecosystem that removes any predefined
and artificial distinction between care-givers and care-takers and
provides a service-oriented infrastructure for intelligent matching
of the supply and demand of services. According to this new
paradigm all people are potentially active participants to
activities defined by the people’s current needs, abilities,
locations, and availabilities. Moving from this conceptual view to
practical implementation calls for an architecture able to match
adequately demand and supply of services. This paper presents
an implementation of such an architecture based on semantic
service description and matching. In comparison with our
previous implementation, main added values include a greater
flexibility in service representation and service matching and
considerable improvements in performance.
On the Role of Perception and Apperception in Ubiquitous and Pervasive Enviro...Vincenzo De Florio
Building on top of classic work on the perception of natural systems this paper addresses the role played by such quality in
environments where change is the rule rather than the exception. As in natural systems, perception in software systems takes two
major forms: sensory perception and awareness (also known as apperception). For each of these forms we introduce semi-formal
models that allow us to discuss and characterize perception and apperception failures in software systems evolving in environments
subjected to rapid and sudden changes—such as those typical of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Our models also provide us
with two partial orders to compare such software systems with one another as well as with reference environments. When those
environments evolve or change, or when the software themselves evolve after their environments, the above partial orders may be
used to compute new environmental fits and different strategic fits and gain insight on the degree of resilience achieved through the
current adaptation steps.
If marketers could marry the engagement factor of streaming video with the targeting of email and guarantee deliverability, the results would be unprecedented. Learn how our new CertifiedVideo service is making the next generation of e-newsletters possible, complete with custom ad-supported video content that's certified to reach the right people at the right time. Also, find out how charter sender Thrillist is using video-in-email to take its campaigns to the next level.
Implementing a Role Based Mutual Assistance Community with Semantic Service D...Vincenzo De Florio
The population of elderly people is increasing rapidly, which
becomes a predominant aspect of our society. For several reasons
so significant a share of the human society is simply regarded as
“retired” – a word condemning the elderly to a reduced
participation in all active life, regardless of their actual
conditions and abilities. In previous work, we discussed how
community resources can be organized in a better way. In
particular we introduced a so-called mutual assistance
community – a digital ecosystem that removes any predefined
and artificial distinction between care-givers and care-takers and
provides a service-oriented infrastructure for intelligent matching
of the supply and demand of services. According to this new
paradigm all people are potentially active participants to
activities defined by the people’s current needs, abilities,
locations, and availabilities. Moving from this conceptual view to
practical implementation calls for an architecture able to match
adequately demand and supply of services. This paper presents
an implementation of such an architecture based on semantic
service description and matching. In comparison with our
previous implementation, main added values include a greater
flexibility in service representation and service matching and
considerable improvements in performance.
On the Role of Perception and Apperception in Ubiquitous and Pervasive Enviro...Vincenzo De Florio
Building on top of classic work on the perception of natural systems this paper addresses the role played by such quality in
environments where change is the rule rather than the exception. As in natural systems, perception in software systems takes two
major forms: sensory perception and awareness (also known as apperception). For each of these forms we introduce semi-formal
models that allow us to discuss and characterize perception and apperception failures in software systems evolving in environments
subjected to rapid and sudden changes—such as those typical of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Our models also provide us
with two partial orders to compare such software systems with one another as well as with reference environments. When those
environments evolve or change, or when the software themselves evolve after their environments, the above partial orders may be
used to compute new environmental fits and different strategic fits and gain insight on the degree of resilience achieved through the
current adaptation steps.
If marketers could marry the engagement factor of streaming video with the targeting of email and guarantee deliverability, the results would be unprecedented. Learn how our new CertifiedVideo service is making the next generation of e-newsletters possible, complete with custom ad-supported video content that's certified to reach the right people at the right time. Also, find out how charter sender Thrillist is using video-in-email to take its campaigns to the next level.
Rising energy costs and the desire to reduce carbon emissions have pushed energy efficiency to the top of the boardroom agenda, yet still one in three managers responsible for energy management questions their employer’s commitment to the cause.
Study: The Future of VR, AR and Self-Driving CarsLinkedIn
We asked LinkedIn members worldwide about their levels of interest in the latest wave of technology: whether they’re using wearables, and whether they intend to buy self-driving cars and VR headsets as they become available. We asked them too about their attitudes to technology and to the growing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the devices that they use. The answers were fascinating – and in many cases, surprising.
This SlideShare explores the full results of this study, including detailed market-by-market breakdowns of intention levels for each technology – and how attitudes change with age, location and seniority level. If you’re marketing a tech brand – or planning to use VR and wearables to reach a professional audience – then these are insights you won’t want to miss.
Models and Concepts for Socio-technical Complex Systems: Towards Fractal Soci...Vincenzo De Florio
We introduce fractal social organizations—a novel class of socio-technical complex systems characterized
by a distributed, bio-inspired, hierarchical architecture. Based on a same building block that is recursively
applied at different layers, said systems provide a homogeneous way to model collective behaviors of
different complexity and scale. Key concepts and principles are enunciated by means of a case study and a
simple formalism. As preliminary evidence of the adequacy of the assumptions underlying our systems here
we define and study an algebraic model for a simple class of social organizations. We show how despite its
generic formulation, geometric representations of said model exhibit the spontaneous emergence of complex
hierarchical and modular patterns characterized by structured addition of complexity and fractal nature—
which closely correspond to the distinctive architectural traits of our fractal social organizations. Some
reflections on the significance of these results and a view to the next steps of our research conclude this
contribution.
The social network analysis (SNA), branch of complex systems can be used in the construction of multiagent
systems. This paper proposes a study of how social network analysis can assist in modeling multiagent
systems, while addressing similarities and differences between the two theories. We built a prototype
of multi-agent systems for resolution of tasks through the formation of teams of agents that are formed on
the basis of the social network established between agents. Agents make use of performance indicators to
assess when should change their social network to maximize the participation in teams.
A Systematic Introduction to Functional Analysis in the Social Sciencesinventionjournals
No study on functional analysis can be successfully concluded without reference to Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton, both world renowned functionalist luminaries in sociology. According to these sociologists a social system is viewed as being made up of interrelated and interacting parts; the parts having consequences for the whole system or some other parts of it, and there being a feedback of the consequences of a part for the system or some other part(s) on that part. Methodologically, functionalism, then, does three things, namely, that it relates: (a) parts of the system to the whole in terms of their consequences for the total system; (b) one part of the system to another part in terms of its consequences for another; and (c) the consequences of a part, back to that part in terms of the way those parts’ consequences for the system or some other parts react upon it. There are four explicit postulates of functional indispensability, and the distinction between manifest and latent functions
IJRET : International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology is an international peer reviewed, online journal published by eSAT Publishing House for the enhancement of research in various disciplines of Engineering and Technology. The aim and scope of the journal is to provide an academic medium and an important reference for the advancement and dissemination of research results that support high-level learning, teaching and research in the fields of Engineering and Technology. We bring together Scientists, Academician, Field Engineers, Scholars and Students of related fields of Engineering and Technology
jashkadshkjsa ksa jdhs k sdajhdsa ks kdsjah dsk sadk asjdh aks asdjk sadkads k kadsjkjsad sadk sdakj dsa jALJALADSJLSAK ASKLASSADJ LAS DSAKSAD LSDK L SADL DASLK ASDJSDAKLJSADLK L SADL LSDAKDASJ L SAD
SOCIAL INTERMEDIARIES AND THE LOCATION OF AGENCY: A Conceptual Reconfiguratio...Martin Berg
Paper presented at Social relations in turbulent times: 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Geneva, Switzerland, 7th-10th September 2011.
Rising energy costs and the desire to reduce carbon emissions have pushed energy efficiency to the top of the boardroom agenda, yet still one in three managers responsible for energy management questions their employer’s commitment to the cause.
Study: The Future of VR, AR and Self-Driving CarsLinkedIn
We asked LinkedIn members worldwide about their levels of interest in the latest wave of technology: whether they’re using wearables, and whether they intend to buy self-driving cars and VR headsets as they become available. We asked them too about their attitudes to technology and to the growing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the devices that they use. The answers were fascinating – and in many cases, surprising.
This SlideShare explores the full results of this study, including detailed market-by-market breakdowns of intention levels for each technology – and how attitudes change with age, location and seniority level. If you’re marketing a tech brand – or planning to use VR and wearables to reach a professional audience – then these are insights you won’t want to miss.
Models and Concepts for Socio-technical Complex Systems: Towards Fractal Soci...Vincenzo De Florio
We introduce fractal social organizations—a novel class of socio-technical complex systems characterized
by a distributed, bio-inspired, hierarchical architecture. Based on a same building block that is recursively
applied at different layers, said systems provide a homogeneous way to model collective behaviors of
different complexity and scale. Key concepts and principles are enunciated by means of a case study and a
simple formalism. As preliminary evidence of the adequacy of the assumptions underlying our systems here
we define and study an algebraic model for a simple class of social organizations. We show how despite its
generic formulation, geometric representations of said model exhibit the spontaneous emergence of complex
hierarchical and modular patterns characterized by structured addition of complexity and fractal nature—
which closely correspond to the distinctive architectural traits of our fractal social organizations. Some
reflections on the significance of these results and a view to the next steps of our research conclude this
contribution.
The social network analysis (SNA), branch of complex systems can be used in the construction of multiagent
systems. This paper proposes a study of how social network analysis can assist in modeling multiagent
systems, while addressing similarities and differences between the two theories. We built a prototype
of multi-agent systems for resolution of tasks through the formation of teams of agents that are formed on
the basis of the social network established between agents. Agents make use of performance indicators to
assess when should change their social network to maximize the participation in teams.
A Systematic Introduction to Functional Analysis in the Social Sciencesinventionjournals
No study on functional analysis can be successfully concluded without reference to Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton, both world renowned functionalist luminaries in sociology. According to these sociologists a social system is viewed as being made up of interrelated and interacting parts; the parts having consequences for the whole system or some other parts of it, and there being a feedback of the consequences of a part for the system or some other part(s) on that part. Methodologically, functionalism, then, does three things, namely, that it relates: (a) parts of the system to the whole in terms of their consequences for the total system; (b) one part of the system to another part in terms of its consequences for another; and (c) the consequences of a part, back to that part in terms of the way those parts’ consequences for the system or some other parts react upon it. There are four explicit postulates of functional indispensability, and the distinction between manifest and latent functions
IJRET : International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology is an international peer reviewed, online journal published by eSAT Publishing House for the enhancement of research in various disciplines of Engineering and Technology. The aim and scope of the journal is to provide an academic medium and an important reference for the advancement and dissemination of research results that support high-level learning, teaching and research in the fields of Engineering and Technology. We bring together Scientists, Academician, Field Engineers, Scholars and Students of related fields of Engineering and Technology
jashkadshkjsa ksa jdhs k sdajhdsa ks kdsjah dsk sadk asjdh aks asdjk sadkads k kadsjkjsad sadk sdakj dsa jALJALADSJLSAK ASKLASSADJ LAS DSAKSAD LSDK L SADL DASLK ASDJSDAKLJSADLK L SADL LSDAKDASJ L SAD
SOCIAL INTERMEDIARIES AND THE LOCATION OF AGENCY: A Conceptual Reconfiguratio...Martin Berg
Paper presented at Social relations in turbulent times: 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Geneva, Switzerland, 7th-10th September 2011.
Application Areas of Community Detection: A Review : NOTESSubhajit Sahu
This is a short review of Community detection methods (on graphs), and their applications. A **community** is a subset of a network whose members are *highly connected*, but *loosely connected* to others outside their community. Different community detection methods *can return differing communities* these algorithms are **heuristic-based**. **Dynamic community detection** involves tracking the *evolution of community structure* over time.
https://gist.github.com/wolfram77/09e64d6ba3ef080db5558feb2d32fdc0
Communities can be of the following **types**:
- Disjoint
- Overlapping
- Hierarchical
- Local.
The following **static** community detection **methods** exist:
- Spectral-based
- Statistical inference
- Optimization
- Dynamics-based
The following **dynamic** community detection **methods** exist:
- Independent community detection and matching
- Dependent community detection (evolutionary)
- Simultaneous community detection on all snapshots
- Dynamic community detection on temporal networks
**Applications** of community detection include:
- Criminal identification
- Fraud detection
- Criminal activities detection
- Bot detection
- Dynamics of epidemic spreading (dynamic)
- Cancer/tumor detection
- Tissue/organ detection
- Evolution of influence (dynamic)
- Astroturfing
- Customer segmentation
- Recommendation systems
- Social network analysis (both)
- Network summarization
- Privary, group segmentation
- Link prediction (both)
- Community evolution prediction (dynamic, hot field)
<br>
<br>
## References
- [Application Areas of Community Detection: A Review : PAPER](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8625349)
Neural Networks Models for Large Social SystemsSSA KPI
AACIMP 2010 Summer School lecture by Alexander Makarenko. "Applied Mathematics" stream. "General Tasks and Problems of Modelling of Social Systems. Problems and Models in Sustainable Development" course. Part 3.
More info at http://summerschool.ssa.org.ua
With the passage of time, the development of communication technology and transportation
broke the isolation among people. Relationship tends to be complicated, pluralism, dynamism.
In the network where interpersonal relationship and evolved complex net based on game theory
work serve respectively as foundation architecture and theoretical model, with the combination
of game theory and regard public welfare as influencing factor, we artificially initialize that
closed network system. Through continual loop operation of the program ,we summarize the
changing rule of the cooperative behavior in the interpersonal relationship, so that we can
analyze the policies about welfare system about whole network and the relationship of
frequency of betrayal in cooperative behavior. Most analytical data come from some simple
investigations and some estimates based on internet and environment and the study put
emphasis on simulating social network and analyze influence of social welfare system on
Cooperative Behavior .
Similar to Service-oriented Communities: Models and Concepts towards Fractal Social Organizations (20)
In the Fifties, Arnold Schönberg introduced a model for music composition that he called "Grundgestalt", the basic shape. In this seminar I show how I interpreted this concept as a generative music model that translates the orbits of dynamic systems into musical components. I also describe a family of experiments that led me to the creation of simple and not-so-simple musical compositions, which I call "my little Grundgestalten”. Excerpts from a selection of those compositions will be presented.
On the Role of Perception and Apperception in Ubiquitous and Pervasive Enviro...Vincenzo De Florio
Building on top of classic work on the perception of natural systems this paper addresses the role played by such quality in
environments where change is the rule rather than the exception. As in natural systems, perception in software systems takes two major forms: sensory perception and awareness (also known as apperception). For each of these forms we introduce semi-formal models that allow us to discuss and characterize perception and apperception failures in software systems evolving in environments subjected to rapid and sudden changes—such as those typical of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Our models also provide us with two partial orders to compare such software systems with one another as well as with reference environments. When those
environments evolve or change, or when the software themselves evolve after their environments, the above partial orders may be used to compute new environmental fits and different strategic fits and gain insight on the degree of resilience achieved through the current adaptation steps.
Service-oriented Communities: A Novel Organizational Architecture for Smarter...Vincenzo De Florio
The seminar I shall present at Masaryk University in Brno on May 19, 2016. A video of this presentation is available at https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=Fu5kv0sFWG4
On codes, machines, and environments: reflections and experiencesVincenzo De Florio
Code explicitly refers to a reference machine and, implicitly, to a set of conditions often called the system model and the fault model.
If one wants to guarantee an agreed-upon quality of service, one needs to either make assumptions about those conditions or adapt to them.
In this lecture I present this problem and a number of solutions, both practical and theoretical, that I have devised in the course of my career.
Although the main accent is on programming languages, here I provide links and references to other approaches that operate at algorithmic- and system-level.
Tapping Into the Wells of Social Energy: A Case Study Based on Falls Identifi...Vincenzo De Florio
Are purely technological solutions the best answer we can get to the shortcomings our organizations are often experiencing today? The results we gathered in this work lead us to giving a negative answer to such question. Science and technology are powerful boosters, though when they are applied to the “local, static organization of an obsolete yesterday” they fail to translate in the solutions we need to our problems. Our stance here is that those boosters should be applied to novel, distributed, and dynamic models able to allow us to escape from the local minima our societies are currently locked in. One such model is simulated in this paper to demonstrate how it may be possible to tap into the vast basins of social energy of our human societies to realize ubiquitous computing sociotechnical services for the identification and timely response to falls.
Accompanying paper available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06655
How Resilient Are Our Societies?Analyses, Models, Preliminary ResultsVincenzo De Florio
Traditional social organizations such as those for the management of healthcare and civil defense are the result of designs and realizations that matched well with an operational
context considerably different from the one we are experiencing today: A simpler world, characterized by a greater amount of resources to match less users producing lower peaks of requests.
The new context reveals all the fragility of our societies: unmanageability is just around the corner unless we do not complement the “old recipes” with smarter forms of social organization.
Here we analyze this problem and propose a refinement to our fractal social organizations as a model for resilient cyber-physical societies. Evidence to our claims is provided by simulating our model in terms of multi-agent systems.
This course teaches engineering students how to program in C. I gave this course for several years in the framework of the "Advanced Technology Higher Education Network" / SOCRATES program.
A framework for trustworthiness assessment based on fidelity in cyber and phy...Vincenzo De Florio
We introduce a method for the assessment of trust for n-open systems based on a measurement of fidelity and present a prototypic implementation of a complaint architecture. We construct a MAPE loop which monitors the compliance between corresponding figures of interest in cyber- and physical domains; derive measures of the system’s trustworthiness; and use them to plan and execute actions aiming at guaranteeing system safety and resilience. We conclude with a view on our future work.
Presented at ANTIFRAGILE'15
Companion paper available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050915008923
A behavioural model for the discussion of resilience, elasticity, and antifra...Vincenzo De Florio
Resilience is one of those "general systems attributes" that appear to play a central role in several disciplines - including ecology, business, psychology, industrial safety, microeconomics, computer networks, security, management science, cybernetics, control theory, crisis and disaster management. Resilience thus seems to be "needed" everywhere; and yet, even in the framework of a same discipline, it is not easy to define it precisely and consensually. To add to the confusion, other terms such as elasticity, change tolerance, and antifragility, although clearly related to resilience, cannot be easily differentiated.
In this talk I tackle this problem by introducing a behavioural model of resilience. I interpret resilience as the property emerging from the interaction of the behaviours produced by two "players": a system and a hosting environment. The outcome of said interaction depends on both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including the systemic "traits" of the system but also how the system's endowment matches the requirements expressed by the behaviours of the environment. I show how the behavioural approach provides a unifying framework within which it is possible to express coherent definitions for elasticity, change tolerance, and antifragility.
A Behavioral Interpretation of Resilience and AntifragilityVincenzo De Florio
In this presentation I discuss resilience and antifragility as behaviors resulting from the coupling of a system and its environment(s). Depending on the interactions between these two "ends" and on the quality of the individual behaviors that they may exercise, different strategies may be chosen: elasticity (change masking); entelechism (change tolerance); and antifragility (adapting to & learning from change). When the environment is very simple and only capable of so-called "random behavior", often the only effective strategy towards resilience is off-line dimensioning of redundancy as a result of a worst-case assessment of disturbances and/or threats. Much more complex and variegated is the case when both systems and environments are "intelligent" -- or at least able to exercise complex teleological and extrapolatory behaviors. In this case both system and ambient may choose among a variety of strategies in what could be regarded as a complex evolutionary game theory setting.
Community Resilience: Challenges, Requirements, and Organizational ModelsVincenzo De Florio
An important challenge for human societies is that of mastering the complexity of Community Resilience, namely “the sustained ability of a community to utilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations”. The above concise definition puts the accent on an important requirement: a community’s ability to
make use in an intelligent way of the available resources, both institutional and spontaneous, in order to match the complex evolution of the “significant multi-hazard threats characterizing a crisis”. Failing to address such requirement exposes a community to extensive failures that are known to exacerbate the consequences of natural and human-induced crises. As a consequence, we experience today an urgent need to respond to the challenges of community resilience engineering. This problem, some reflections, and preliminary prototypical contributions constitute
the topics of this presentation.
A companion article is available at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67040428/Articles/serene14.pdf
On the Behavioral Interpretation of System-Environment Fit and Auto-ResilienceVincenzo De Florio
Already 71 years ago Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow introduced the concept of the “behavioristic study of natural events” and proposed a classification of systems according to the quality of the behaviors they are able to exercise. In this presentation we consider the problem of the resilience of a system when deployed in a changing environment, which we tackle by considering the behaviors both the system organs and the environment mutually exercise. We then introduce a partial order and a metric space for those behaviors, and we use them to define a behavioral interpretation of the concept of system-environment fit. Moreover we suggest that behaviors based on the extrapolation of future environmental requirements would allow systems to proactively improve their own system-environment fit and optimally evolve their resilience. Finally we describe how we plan to express a complex optimization strategy in terms of the concepts introduced in this presentation.
The paper accompanying this presentation is available at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67040428/Articles/DF14b_Wiener21stA.pdf
Antifragility = Elasticity + Resilience + Machine Learning. Models and Algori...Vincenzo De Florio
Presentation for the ANTIFRAGILE 2014 workshop, https://sites.google.com/site/resilience2antifragile/
Abstract: We introduce a model of the fidelity of open systems—fidelity being interpreted here as the compliance between corresponding
figures of interest in two separate but communicating domains. A special case of fidelity is given by real-timeliness and synchrony,
in which the figure of interest is the physical and the system’s notion of time. Our model covers two orthogonal aspects of fidelity,
the first one focusing on a system’s steady state and the second one capturing that system’s dynamic and behavioral characteristics.
We discuss how the two aspects correspond respectively to elasticity and resilience and we highlight each aspect’s qualities and
limitations. Finally we sketch the elements of a new model coupling both of the first model’s aspects and complementing them
with machine learning. Finally, a conjecture is put forward that the new model may represent a first step towards compositional
criteria for antifragile systems.
Service-oriented Communities and Fractal Social Organizations - Models and co...Vincenzo De Florio
Presentation given by Vincenzo De Florio at the Ceremony for the handing of the 2013 Faculty Awards.
Keywords: Fractal social organizations; service oriented communities; mutual assistance communities
Seminarie Computernetwerken 2012-2013: Lecture I, 26-02-2013Vincenzo De Florio
Seminarie Computernetwerken is a course given at Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium
A series of seminars focusing on various themes changing from year to year.
This year's themes are: resilience, behaviour, evolvability; in systems, networks, and organizations
In what follows we describe:
themes of the course
view to the seminars
rules of the game
TOWARDS PARSIMONIOUS RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN CONTEXT-AWARE N-VERSION PROGRAMMINGVincenzo De Florio
Adopting classic redundancy-based fault-tolerant schemes in
highly dynamic distributed computing systems does not
necessarily result in the anticipated improvement in
dependability. This primarily stems from statically predefined
redundancy configurations employed within many classic
dependability strategies, which as well known may negatively
impact the schemes' overall effectiveness. In this paper, a
novel dependability strategy is introduced encompassing
advanced redundancy management, aiming to autonomously
tune its internal configuration in function of disturbances
observed. Policies for parsimonious resource allocation are
presented thereafter, intent upon increasing the scheme's cost
effectiveness without breaching its availability objective. Our
experimentation suggests that the suggested solution can
achieve a substantial improvement in availability, compared
to traditional, static redundancy strategies, and that tuning the
adopted degree of redundancy to the actual observed
disturbances allows unnecessary resource expenditure to be
reduced, therefore enhancing cost-effectiveness.
A Formal Model and an Algorithm for Generating the Permutations of a MultisetVincenzo De Florio
This paper may be considered as a mathematical divertissement as well as a didactical tool for
undergraduate students in a universitary course on algorithms and computation. The well-known problem of
generating the permutations of a multiset of marks is considered. We define a formal model and an abstract
machine (an extended Turing machine). Then we write an algorithm to compute on that machine the successor
of a given permutation in the lexicographically ordered set of permutations of a multiset. Within the model we
analyze the algorithm, prove its correctness, and show that the algorithm solves the above problem. Then we
describe a slight modification of the algorithm and we analyze in which cases it may result in an improvement of
execution times.
This paper, the ideas in it, and its realization are the work of the first author only.
A FAULT-TOLERANCE LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE FOR DISTRIBUTED APPLICATIONSVincenzo De Florio
The structures for the expression of fault-tolerance provisions into the application
software are the central topic of this dissertation.
Structuring techniques provide means to control complexity, the latter being a relevant factor
for the introduction of design faults. This fact and the ever increasing complexity of today’s dis-
tributed software justify the need for simple, coherent, and effective structures for the expression
of fault-tolerance in the application software. A first contribution of this dissertation is the defi-
nition of a base of structural attributes with which application-level fault-tolerance structures can
be qualitatively assessed and compared with each other and with respect to the above mentioned
need. This result is then used to provide an elaborated survey of the state-of-the-art of software
fault-tolerance structures.
The key contribution of this work is a novel structuring technique for the expression of the
fault-tolerance design concerns in the application layer of those distributed software systems
that are characterised by soft real-time requirements and with a number of processing nodes
known at compile-time. The main thesis of this dissertation is that this new structuring tech-
nique is capable of exhibiting satisfactory values of the structural attributes in the domain of soft
real-time, distributed and parallel applications. Following this novel approach, beside the con-
ventional programming language addressing the functional design concerns, a special-purpose
linguistic structure (the so-called “recovery language”) is available to address error recovery and
reconfiguration. This recovery language comes into play as soon as an error is detected by an
underlying error detection layer, or when some erroneous condition is signalled by the applica-
tion processes. Error recovery and reconfiguration are specified as a set of guarded actions, i.e.,
actions that require a pre-condition to be fulfilled in order to be executed. Recovery actions deal
with coarse-grained entities of the application and pre-conditions query the current state of those
entities.
An important added value of this so-called “recovery language approach” is that the exe-
cutable code is structured so that the portion addressing fault-tolerance is distinct and separated
from the rest of the code. This allows for division of complexity into distinct blocks that can be
tackled independently of each other.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
zkStudyClub - Reef: Fast Succinct Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Regex ProofsAlex Pruden
This paper presents Reef, a system for generating publicly verifiable succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs that a committed document matches or does not match a regular expression. We describe applications such as proving the strength of passwords, the provenance of email despite redactions, the validity of oblivious DNS queries, and the existence of mutations in DNA. Reef supports the Perl Compatible Regular Expression syntax, including wildcards, alternation, ranges, capture groups, Kleene star, negations, and lookarounds. Reef introduces a new type of automata, Skipping Alternating Finite Automata (SAFA), that skips irrelevant parts of a document when producing proofs without undermining soundness, and instantiates SAFA with a lookup argument. Our experimental evaluation confirms that Reef can generate proofs for documents with 32M characters; the proofs are small and cheap to verify (under a second).
Paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1886
Observability Concepts EVERY Developer Should Know -- DeveloperWeek Europe.pdfPaige Cruz
Monitoring and observability aren’t traditionally found in software curriculums and many of us cobble this knowledge together from whatever vendor or ecosystem we were first introduced to and whatever is a part of your current company’s observability stack.
While the dev and ops silo continues to crumble….many organizations still relegate monitoring & observability as the purview of ops, infra and SRE teams. This is a mistake - achieving a highly observable system requires collaboration up and down the stack.
I, a former op, would like to extend an invitation to all application developers to join the observability party will share these foundational concepts to build on:
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
SAP Sapphire 2024 - ASUG301 building better apps with SAP Fiori.pdfPeter Spielvogel
Building better applications for business users with SAP Fiori.
• What is SAP Fiori and why it matters to you
• How a better user experience drives measurable business benefits
• How to get started with SAP Fiori today
• How SAP Fiori elements accelerates application development
• How SAP Build Code includes SAP Fiori tools and other generative artificial intelligence capabilities
• How SAP Fiori paves the way for using AI in SAP apps
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
Enhancing Performance with Globus and the Science DMZGlobus
ESnet has led the way in helping national facilities—and many other institutions in the research community—configure Science DMZs and troubleshoot network issues to maximize data transfer performance. In this talk we will present a summary of approaches and tips for getting the most out of your network infrastructure using Globus Connect Server.
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
Le nuove frontiere dell'AI nell'RPA con UiPath Autopilot™UiPathCommunity
In questo evento online gratuito, organizzato dalla Community Italiana di UiPath, potrai esplorare le nuove funzionalità di Autopilot, il tool che integra l'Intelligenza Artificiale nei processi di sviluppo e utilizzo delle Automazioni.
📕 Vedremo insieme alcuni esempi dell'utilizzo di Autopilot in diversi tool della Suite UiPath:
Autopilot per Studio Web
Autopilot per Studio
Autopilot per Apps
Clipboard AI
GenAI applicata alla Document Understanding
👨🏫👨💻 Speakers:
Stefano Negro, UiPath MVPx3, RPA Tech Lead @ BSP Consultant
Flavio Martinelli, UiPath MVP 2023, Technical Account Manager @UiPath
Andrei Tasca, RPA Solutions Team Lead @NTT Data
Climate Impact of Software Testing at Nordic Testing DaysKari Kakkonen
My slides at Nordic Testing Days 6.6.2024
Climate impact / sustainability of software testing discussed on the talk. ICT and testing must carry their part of global responsibility to help with the climat warming. We can minimize the carbon footprint but we can also have a carbon handprint, a positive impact on the climate. Quality characteristics can be added with sustainability, and then measured continuously. Test environments can be used less, and in smaller scale and on demand. Test techniques can be used in optimizing or minimizing number of tests. Test automation can be used to speed up testing.
Removing Uninteresting Bytes in Software FuzzingAftab Hussain
Imagine a world where software fuzzing, the process of mutating bytes in test seeds to uncover hidden and erroneous program behaviors, becomes faster and more effective. A lot depends on the initial seeds, which can significantly dictate the trajectory of a fuzzing campaign, particularly in terms of how long it takes to uncover interesting behaviour in your code. We introduce DIAR, a technique designed to speedup fuzzing campaigns by pinpointing and eliminating those uninteresting bytes in the seeds. Picture this: instead of wasting valuable resources on meaningless mutations in large, bloated seeds, DIAR removes the unnecessary bytes, streamlining the entire process.
In this work, we equipped AFL, a popular fuzzer, with DIAR and examined two critical Linux libraries -- Libxml's xmllint, a tool for parsing xml documents, and Binutil's readelf, an essential debugging and security analysis command-line tool used to display detailed information about ELF (Executable and Linkable Format). Our preliminary results show that AFL+DIAR does not only discover new paths more quickly but also achieves higher coverage overall. This work thus showcases how starting with lean and optimized seeds can lead to faster, more comprehensive fuzzing campaigns -- and DIAR helps you find such seeds.
- These are slides of the talk given at IEEE International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshop, ICSTW 2022.
Essentials of Automations: The Art of Triggers and Actions in FMESafe Software
In this second installment of our Essentials of Automations webinar series, we’ll explore the landscape of triggers and actions, guiding you through the nuances of authoring and adapting workspaces for seamless automations. Gain an understanding of the full spectrum of triggers and actions available in FME, empowering you to enhance your workspaces for efficient automation.
We’ll kick things off by showcasing the most commonly used event-based triggers, introducing you to various automation workflows like manual triggers, schedules, directory watchers, and more. Plus, see how these elements play out in real scenarios.
Whether you’re tweaking your current setup or building from the ground up, this session will arm you with the tools and insights needed to transform your FME usage into a powerhouse of productivity. Join us to discover effective strategies that simplify complex processes, enhancing your productivity and transforming your data management practices with FME. Let’s turn complexity into clarity and make your workspaces work wonders!
Leading Change strategies and insights for effective change management pdf 1.pdf
Service-oriented Communities: Models and Concepts towards Fractal Social Organizations
1. Service-oriented Communities: Models and
Concepts towards Fractal Social Organizations
Vincenzo De Florio∗† , Antonio Coronato‡ , Mohamed Bakhouya§ and Giovanna Di Marzo¶
∗ University
of Antwerp / PATS,
Middelheimlaan 1, 2020 Antwerp, Belgium
† iMinds / Future Internet Department / PATS,
Gaston Crommenlaan 8, 9050 Ghent-Ledeberg, Belgium
E-mail: vincenzo.deflorio@ua.ac.be
‡ Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking
National Research Council
80131 Napoli, Italy
E-mail: antonio.coronato@na.icar.cnr.it
§ Aalto University
School of Engineering, Otakaari 4, Aalto, Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: bakhouya@gmail.com
¶ Université Genève
Institute of Services Science, Battelle Bâtiment A
Rte de Drize 7, CH-1227 Carouge, Switzerland
E-mail: giovanna.dimarzo@unige.ch
Abstract—It is described an abstract model for the definition and the dynamic evolution of “communities of actants”
originating from a given reference society of roles. Multiple
representations are provided, showing how communities evolve
with respect to their reference societies. In particular we show
how such representations are self-similar and factorisable into
“prime” constituents. An operating model is then introduced
that describes the life-cycle of the communities of actants. After
this a software component is presented—the service-oriented
community—and its features are described in terms of the above
mentioned models. Finally it is shown how such component can
constitute the building block of a novel architecture for the design
of fractal social organizations.
Index Terms—Socio-technical systems; social organizations;
collective adaptive systems; holarchies; fractal organizations.
I. S OCIETIES AS C OMPLEX C OLLECTIVE A DAPTIVE
S YSTEMS
Many scholars have studied the capability that societies
of individuals possess to self-organize into higher forms of
collective systems. Nature provides us with many examples
of this phenomenon at different scales—for instance anthills,
flocks, or cells. Societies of computer or hybrid systems are
another well-known domain in which the emergence of selforganization has been thoroughly investigated. In his classic
general systems theory paper [1] Boulding introduces such
systems as social organizations, that he defines as “a set
of roles tied together with channels of communication”. We
observe how even such a concise definition already captures
several important aspects of the dynamics of social organizations:
A set. . . : Social organizations are (sub-)sets of societal
constituents.
. . . of roles. . . : Such sets are characterized not by the identities of their constituents, but rather by their role:
quoting Boulding [1], in social organisations “the
unit [. . . ] is not perhaps the person but the role—
that part of the person which is concerned with
the organisation or situation in question”. In other
words, in Algebraic terms, social organizations may
be modeled as multisets of roles.
. . . tied together. . . : The dynamics of the creation, operation, and destruction of this class of systems is governed by some force, or energy, that “ties together”,
that is autonomically specializes, differentiates, and
partitions, the constituent multiset from the rest of
society. Purposeful active behaviour [2] for the attainment of a shared goal is one such force. Social
energy is the term referred to such force in [3]. In the
same paper the term “community” is used to refer to
social organizations while it is “network” in actornetwork theory—a sociological method studying the
dynamics of social organizations [4].
. . . with channels of communication: Such channels represent the media through which the constituents of
a social organizations timely share their individual
goals, situations, and states. Channels also induce
concepts such as proximity and membership: depending on the characteristics of the communication
channels members of the communities shall or shall
not be able to access knowledge and take part in
2. decisions. By channel we interpret herein also the
set of rules to make use of the channel and to take
local decisions and local actions. The term used in
literature for this set of rules is “canon.”
Inspired by the Algebraic nature of Boulding’s definition
and by previous work on the dynamics of multisets [5], [6]
we set to define a formal model for the dynamics of compliant
societies and social organizations. Section II describes such
model. After this, in Sect. III we extended this model by means
of a case study and an abstract operating model for the lifecycle of social organizations. In Sect. IV then we briefly introduced the key ideas of a building block and an architecture for
the definition of social organizations. Preliminary conclusions
and future work are finally stated in Sect. V.
II. A LGEBRAIC M ODEL FOR S OCIAL O RGANIZATIONS
In this section we introduce a formal model for the dynamics
of societies of roles.
Let us assume we have a set of roles, uniquely identified
by integer numbers, and a set of actants each of which is
associated with one such role. In what follows for the sake of
simplicity of treatise we shall assume this association to be
static. As an example, let us say we have
2 general practitioners (GPs), 2 nurses, and 8 patients,
collectively identified by multiset
S = {0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2}.
(1)
Let us refer to multiset (1) as to a society.
Furthermore, let us consider operator concatenation (“·”) to
build “sequences” from the elements in the society.
In what follows we shall refer to any such sequence as to
an organization. An example of organization is the following
sequence:
0 · 1 · 1 · 2 · 2 · 2 · 2 · 0 · 2 · 2 · 2 · 2.
We shall also refer to such sequence as “0 · 12 · 24 · 0 · 24 ” or
simply as “011222202222”.
No specific meaning is given in what follows to organizations, their purpose, or their behaviour. The only aspect
that is highlighted in this definition is the order and role of
the constituents, as it is the case e.g. in DNA sequences of
nucleotides. Another exemplification is a construction pipeline,
where “something is done” by moving some data e.g. left-toright through a set of actants identified by their role—that is
to say their peculiar function. Yet another example is a table
of instructions coded onto a Turing machine.
Now let us consider the onset of some situation [7] (endogenous or exogenous to the society) such that some reaction
is triggered by or through some of the actants in the society.
Such situations may be interpreted as opportunities (e.g. the
onset of competitive advantage in the business domain), threats
(e.g. an outbreak in the epidemiology domain), crises (e.g. an
earthquake), or other circumstances or changes.
As an example, let us consider e.g. the onset of c, an
alarming situation regarding one of the patients—for instance,
the patient has fallen. Through some “communication channel”
this situation triggers the intervention of 1 GP and 1 nurse. As
a consequence, society (1) gets partitioned into two “blocks”:
subset L = {0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2} and subset R = {0, 1, 2}.
By construction, L is inactive with respect to c, while R is
active with respect to c. In what follows we shall refer to an
active subset of a society as to a community (when obvious
from the context, situation c will be omitted). Being active
means that the actants in R need to organize themselves (in
some sense and here not specified way) so as to deal with
the situation at hand. Summarizing, our exemplary society
gets partitioned with respect to c into an inert subset L and
some organization of community R—that is, an ordering of
the active actants in S.
In what follows we shall model the dynamics of multisets
L and organizations R. We shall assume that events occur at
discrete time steps and are modeled as either processing events
or perturbations: the former case stands for functional events
corresponding to the processing of some workflow internal
to the organizations, the latter is the onset of new situations
leading to
1) either a reorganization of the elements within a community
2) or a repartitioning of the society into two new blocks L
and R .
Reorganization processes are called in [8] “dynamic restructuring processes.”
In what follows we model the reorganization in step 1 as a
permutation of R—that is, a new ordering for its constituents.
The rationale of this is that in this case the community
responds to the onset of c by finding resources within itself,
possibly reshaping the flow of activities, but keeping the same
roles. In mathematical terms R is closed with respect to
perturbation c.
The repartitioning in step 2 signifies that the community
calls for external resources—resources that were inactive (i.e.
they correspond to roles in L) but now need to be enacted
(entering R and thus constituting a new R ).
Let us assume that a given society consists of r roles,
identified by numbers 0, . . . , r − 1, and that role i is played
by ni actants, 0 ≤ i < r. Let us call as “First” a function
defined as follows:
First : B(S) → O(B(S)), such that
∀X ⊂ S : ∃n0 , n1 , . . . , nr−1 :
First(X) = 0
n0
·1
n1
nr−1
· (r − 1)
(2)
,
where B is the Boolean function of a set and O maps sets
onto organizations. Note that First generates the organization
corresponding to the “smallest” number whose digits are
the role identifiers. Let us refer to First(X) as to the “first
organization” of X. Similarly we define dual function “Last”
and refer to Last(X) as to the “last organization” of X.
3. We now recall the definition of function “Succ” (adapted
from [5]). Succ takes as input sequence
First(L) · R
(3)
and returns the sequence corresponding to the next organization in the lexicographically ordered set of all organizations
of the input sequence. Applying Succ to the last organization
returns the first one. Respectively we define Succ−1 as the
function returning the previous organization. If applied to the
first organization, Succ−1 returns the last one.
We now can model both cases of perturbations by “tossing a
coin” corresponding to a relative non-zero integer number, say
o, and applying (Succ)o if o > 0 and (Succ−1 )−o if o < 01 .
Succ (respectively, its inverse) corresponds to perturbations
that (in the absence of wraparounds) tend to let R grow
(respectively, shrink) into a new R .
If we toss a coin and apply the above process at each time
step t, the following series
L(t), R(t)
t≥0
(4)
defines a dynamic system corresponding to the dynamic lifecycle (that is, the evolution) of the possible organizations out
of a given society of roles.
A. Properties
The just described model considerably extends the deterministic combinatorial model introduced in [5]. As it was
done in the cited paper, here we can provide geometrical
representations for the evolution of the dynamic system in (4).
As an example, each orbit may be mapped onto an integer by
interpreting roles as digits in some base. Another representation is obtained by mapping the differences between numbers
corresponding to consecutive orbits—we call these numbers
“delta steps.”
As an example, Fig. 1 shows the dynamics of society S =
{0, 1, 2, 3, 4} throughout all possible organizations (viz., all the
permutations of multiset S). This corresponds to consistently
applying Succ with o = 1 until the last organization is reached
(no wrap around is shown). Ordinates here are delta steps. As
can be seen from the picture, dynamics such as these are selfsimilar as they include the dynamics of smaller societies.
Self-similarity is also evident by applying other geometrical
representations. One such representation arbitrarily breaks
down organizations into m consecutive “chunks” of roles and
interprets each of them as a base-r integer (cf. (2)). In turn,
these numbers are used to identify points in m-dimensional
space. An example for m = 3 is shown in Fig. 2.
A noteworthy property of the above shown representations is
the fact that they are factorisable: their structure can be shown
to be governed by well defined rules reproducing the dynamics
of simpler and simpler organizations, down to some atomic or
“prime” organizations that cannot be further simplified. This
is shown for instance in Fig. 3.
An interpretation of this phenomenon is that factorization
represents a change of scale: prime organizations unite into a
coherent and self-similar hierarchical organization. The higher
we go in the scale the more complex is the organization. Such
complexity though is not introduced arbitrarily but according
to a well-defined general rule. It is our conjecture that such
“structured addition” of complexity is at the core of the
robustness and resilience of systems and eco-systems based
on such principle—the dynamic equilibrium pointed out by
Webb and Levin in [10].
Preliminary evidence of the trustworthiness of our conjecture may be accrued by estimating the fractal dimension of our
representation. To do this we counted the number of distinct
orbits corresponding to families of self-similar societies. A
family is self-similar in the sense that the dynamics of a
smaller scale member is included in the larger scale ones.
One such family is for instance
{02i+1 , 1, 2, 2}, i > 1,
that is the family composed by an increasing and odd number
of role-0 actants (e.g. patients) as well as by 1 role-1 and 2
role-2 actants (for instance, a GP and 2 nurses). We interpreted
i as the “scale” of the system and computed for each member
the formula
log(actants)
.
(5)
log(scale factor)
We found that for large societies formula (5) tends to become
stable, which suggests a fractal dimension for this family of
societies. This is portrayed in Fig. 4. Future work will encompass the use of other methods—for instance clustering or
graph coloring methods—for estimating the fractal dimension.
We remark how not all families exhibit a similar trend—for
instance family
{04 , 12i }, i > 1
exhibits a quite different trend that can be seen in Fig. 5.
We have modeled the dynamics of restructuring of simple
organizations by mapping organizations onto multisets of
roles. Due to this assumption the resulting social organizations
may be considered as ordered “chains” of sequential roles,
similar in function to the stages of construction pipelines
or to robot teams in spatial computing [11]. Representations
of the dynamics of these organizations exhibit properties
such as self-similarity and factorization into prime building
blocks, in which complexity builds up through well-defined
and well structured patterns. In what follows we make use of
a case study to present an operating model for the definition
of collective adaptive systems based on the just introduced
dynamics of communities of actants.
III. C ASE S TUDY AND O PERATING M ODEL
fact, due to the “wrap around” of functions Succ and Succ−1 , o may
be substituted with o mod pS , where pS is the number of permutations of S.
This number also represent the amount of distinct orbits of Succ and Succ−1 ,
i.e. the length of their only cycle.
1 In
Let us suppose that Mary, an elderly woman, is living
in her smart house. A smart house includes several devices,
among which an accelerometer that is used to assess situations
4. Fig. 1.
Dynamics of society {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}. Rectangular regions correspond to society {0, 1, 2} (green rectangle) and society {0, 1, 2, 3} (cyan rectangle).
Fig. 2.
POV-ray [9] picture generated by interpreting the orbits in (4) as coordinates in a 3D space. Again self-similarity can be observed.
such as “Mary has fallen” (situation c in Sect. II). The smart
house service includes also a GP, who is timely informed of
situations through some communication channel. Let us refer
to the following roles as to society S1 :
S1 = {δ0 , δ1 , δ2 , . . . , δd , GP, Channel, Mary},
in which δ0 is the accelerometer, δ1 is an alarm module (to
be introduced later on) and δ2 , . . . , δd are other devices not
relevant to the current case.
Let us now suppose that situation “Mary has fallen” takes
place. Let us also suppose that δ0 operates according to its
specifications and correctly assesses the situation at hand. We
shall then say that δ0 becomes active. In terms of the model
defined in Sect. II, this implies that S1 is now partitioned into
an L1 set and an R1 community as follows:
L1 = S1 {δ0 }, R1 = {δ0 }.
Becoming active means that δ0 starts looking for pertinent
activities—activities that is that are relevant for the situation at
hand. Activities are interpreted here as well-defined protocols
to deal with the situation at hand. In what follows we shall not
consider the nature of these protocols and just assume that they
are formal descriptions of common practice, specifications, or
regulations, that are being associated to the roles of S1 through
some mechanism (for instance, meta-data).
In what follows we shall denote activities as follows:
«situation : action».
Actions shall take the form:
5. Fig. 3. Society {08 , 16 }, when represented bi-dimensionally, can be factorized into several instances of atomic societal nuclei, or “prime communities”.
(Picture from [6]—copyright by Wolfram Research Inc. Used by permission.)
Fig. 4.
Values of (5) for societies {02i+1 , 1, 2, 2}, i > 1.
( role → step )
where “ ” stands for “one or more occurrence”. Occurrences
are separated by either “;” for sequential execution or by
“//” for parallel execution. Parentheses may be used to group
occurrences.
We now assume the presence of the following activity
among those pertaining to role δ0 :
«fallen : (δ1 → alarm(fallen))».
(6)
Activity (6) states that, once δ0 assesses condition “fallen”,
then δ1 is to execute a single action step and raise an alarm.
It is worth remarking here how action steps call for actants.
If a corresponding role can be found in organization R1 , that
role is associated with the execution of the corresponding
step. On the contrary a restructuring (called repartitioning in
Sect. II) occurs:
L2 = S1 {δ0 , δ1 }, R2 = {δ0 , δ1 }.
Community R2 can now execute (6). After this, R2 dissolves back into the original society: L3 = S1 , R3 = ∅.
As it is sensible to do, we now suppose that activity (6)
injects a new situation: “alarm has been triggered”. The
corresponding activity is assumed to be the following one:
«alarm(fallen): ( ( GP
→ fallenPatient(fallen) )
// ( neighbor → fallenNeighbor(fallen) )
// ( relative → fallenRelative(fallen) ) )».
6. Fig. 5.
Values of (5) for societies {04 , 12i }, i ≥ 1.
The first step implies a new partitioning as follows:
IV. S ERVICE - ORIENTED C OMMUNITIES
L4 = S1 {GP, Mary}, R4 = {GP, Mary}.
The treatment of this case is similar to what discussed above
and it will not repeated in what follows. What we now focus
our attention on is the fact that action steps such as (neighbor
→ fallenNeighbor(fallen)) can not be resolved within the
current society: in fact S1 does not include a “neighbor” role.
When a society finds itself short of a role, a new “metasituation” occurs and triggers the following default activity:
«∅ : (S1 → up(neighbor,alarm(fallen)))».
(7)
Situation “∅” may be interpreted as an exception that either
forwards the request to the next superset society that includes
the current one—if any such society exists—or it fails—if no
such society can be found.
Now let us suppose that the mentioned superset society does
exist and be equal to
S2 = {S1 , neighbor, something else}.
Through the onset of the meta-situation in S1 , roles neighbor
and S1 become active. As usual this translates into a partitioning of S2 into the following two blocks:
1
L1 = {something else} and R2 = {S1 , neighbor}.
2
As a consequence, neighbor now can become active within
1
R2 and deal with the situation inherited from S1 . Note how
this is a change of scale corresponding to moving up through
a tree such as the one in Fig. 3. Note also how the life
1
span of community R2 is defined by the duration of the
action step neighbor → fallenNeighbor(fallen). Finally, we
remark how more than one exception may occur, leading to
the participation of S1 into more than one superset society at
the same time.
We now provide the basic elements of an architecture based
on the principles discussed so far.
In Sect. II we have introduced a formal model for the
dynamics of communities of roles and then in Sect. III an
abstract operating model to describe how we envision the
life-cycle for such communities. A practical use of the above
results requires an architecture able to allocate dynamically
roles to social members as well as the ability to manage
dynamically those roles in function of the situation at hand and
the characteristics of the available members. In what follows
we provide the key ideas of such an architecture—namely its
building block and its hierarchical organization.
As shown in previous sections, actants are characterized by
significant diversity: actants can be smart devices or human beings; in the latter case, they may have a variety of purposes and
a dynamicity of goals—for instance reaching a certain location
within a given time, with a maximum budget of travelling
costs, and with a minimum threshold of quality of experience.
Furthermore they may be characterized by different features,
e.g. 1) different know-hows (e.g. those of a GP, or those of a
gardener), 2) different policies in providing their services (e.g.
well-defined time schedules and fares, or dynamically varying
availability to provide free-of-charge services as occasional
informal carers), 3) different location, in that actants may be
mobile, thus able to get dynamically closer to or farther from
other actants, 4) different value systems making them more
or less sensible to the onset of certain situations, and so on.
Accordingly, a first service in our software model is to collect,
manage, and classify the peculiar aspects and distinctive
characters of a set of actants in proximity of one another. This
is depicted in Fig. 6. We envision that people and devices
compliant to our model publish their characteristics through
some well-defined semantic representation called “viewpoint”.
Such viewpoints would be managed by some shared space
organized e.g. as tuple spaces [12], [13]. According to some
strategy one of the actants would temporarily assume a special
“meta-role”, namely that of manager of the viewpoint space.
Replication and mutual watchdog mechanisms as in [14], [15]
7. could be used to enhance the resilience of this managing
actant. Here roles would be assigned to the actants and the
onset of situations would be declared and broadcast. This
special role would also include the local coordination of the
activities associated to the known situations and the publishing
of the community life-cycle events (that is, the creation of
new L and R sets). Furthermore, this actant would manage
the propagation of “role shortage” exceptions as described in
Sect. III.
The just sketched component may be considered as the
building block for an architecture managing dynamic hierarchies of communities of roles. The term used in literature to
refer to such a component is “canon”, while hierarchical organizations of these building blocks are known as “holarchies”
and “fractal organizations”2 . A SoC fractal organization is
depicted in Fig. 7, which portray service-oriented communities
at different scales—here identified as Layer 0, Layer 1, and
Layer 2 members. An exemplary representation is shown
in Fig. 8, whose layers include individuals, smart houses,
hospitals, and communities of hospitals. The same triangleshaped pattern of the SoC repeats itself in each scale. The
right-hand side of Fig. 7 provides a representation of this
phenomenon in terms of a fractal structure whose dimension
is approximately equal to 1.5849625.
A multiplicity of such organizations may exist and—as it
is the case in real-life—actants may be part of several such
structures at the same time, possibly playing different roles.
V. C ONCLUSIONS AND N EXT S TEPS
Three models have been introduced to describe the dynamics of communities of actants, their life-cycle, and a
building block for the definition of compliant fractal social
organizations. We showed how such models are characterized
by a structured addition of complexity, by self-similarity, and
by factorization into prime constituents. Based on results
of other researchers [10], [18] we conjecture how those
properties may prelude to robustness, resilience, and selforganization capability. Preliminary research on “flat” (singlelayered) communities suggests that they may also allow the
exploitation of the “self-serve” potential of our societies [19],
[20]. Future work will include a full-fledged design of the
SoC and its validation through simulation models and reallife applications. Moreover, we intend to address the study
of the social aspects of such systems and their modeling as
“actor networks” [4]. Formal methods such as bigraphical
reactive systems [21] are also being used [22] to describe the
behaviours of fractal social organizations.
2 Holonic and fractal organizations are compositions of autonomous building
blocks, called respectively holons and fractals, which “are simultaneously
a part and a whole, a container and a contained, a controller and a controlled” [8]. A same structure and a same set of configuration rules (the
already mentioned canon) are repeated at different granularity scales. Those
structures are autonomous entities that establish cooperative relationships and
are characterized by the emergence of stability, flexibility, and by efficient
use of the available resources. Examples of the above organizations are the
Fractal Company [16], the Fractal Factory [17], and Holonic Manufacturing
Systems [8].
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was partially funded by the iMinds research
institute (www.iminds.be).
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8. Fig. 6.
Fig. 7.
Representation of the canon of the Service-oriented Community.
The left-hand picture represents the SoC architecture. Resemblance with a known fractal is shown in the right-hand side.
Fig. 8.
Exemplification of SoC social organizations.