The ARC Centre for Complex Systems (ACCS) was established in 2004 from a consortium of Australian universities, led by the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

. The objective of ACCS was to conduct basic and applied research in the field of

complex systems A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication sy ...

. It conducted research into both the science and engineering of complex systems. Funding was provided by the

Australian Research Council The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the primary non-medical research funding agency of the Australian Government, distributing more than in grants each year. The Council was established by the ''Australian Research Council Act 2001'', ...

(ARC) and the universities involved. The ACCS was funded under the ARC's

Centre of Excellence A center of excellence (COE or CoE ), also called excellence center, is a team, a shared facility or an entity that provides leadership, best practices, research, support or training for a focus area. Due to its broad usage and vague legal prec ...

Scheme until mid-2009, after which industry collaborations and further funding was established to continue to apply the Centre's research.

Background and description

Complex systems A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication sy ...

science is an emerging discipline developing new ways of investigating large, highly intricate, dynamically changing systems across diverse areas such as

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods fo ...

s and socio-technological systems, economics and the environment. The ACCS was established to conduct world-class research on questions fundamental to understanding, designing and managing complex systems. While complex systems research is considered basic research, with commercialisation still some time off, complex computing holds answers to real-life systems. The ACCS provided a focus for complex systems science research in Australia, and developed strong infrastructure for modelling and analysing network-based systems, enabling the science to be applied to real-world problems. The Centre had its headquarters at

The University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = Br ...

in Brisbane, with nodes at

Griffith University Griffith University is a public research university in South East Queensland on the east coast of Australia. Formally founded in 1971, Griffith opened its doors in 1975, introducing Australia's first degrees in environmental science and Asian ...

in Brisbane,

Monash University Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has ...

in Melbourne, and

The University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensive ...

campus at the

Australian Defence Force Academy The Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) is a tri-service military Academy that provides military and academic education for junior officers of the Australian Defence Force in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Australian Army and Royal Au ...

in Canberra. International partners were the French Centre National de la Research Scientifique and the

Indian Institute of Technology The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are central government owned public technical institutes located across India. They are under the ownership of the Ministry of Education of the Government of India. They are governed by the Insti ...

, and investigators from

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research. CSIRO works with leading organisations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO ...

, the

Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, inclu ...

and other Australian and international organisations collaborated on the program. The ACCS's research programs emphasised cross-disciplinary research, involving leading researchers from a range of disciplines including: systems and software engineering, economics, visualisation, human factors, computational mathematics and statistics, and relevant application domains including aerospace, economics, energy and biology.

Research program

The goal of the ACCS's research was to develop deeper understanding of fundamental phenomena in complex systems, such as how macro-level system properties and behaviours emerge from relatively simple micro-level interactions, what mechanisms enable complex systems to self-organise, and how complex systems can be managed and controlled. Th
Centre's core research program
was based around a number of application areas.

Genetic regulatory networks

Research in this program tackled fundamental questions about growth and form in cellular biology. Computational modelling was used to study how the control of development results from an interaction between each cell's genetic regulatory network and its inputs from neighbouring cells and its environment, and how the process proceeds reliably, while coping with unreliable components, perturbation, injury, and changing environments.

Air traffic control

This program applied complex systems science to the problem of improving the efficiency of air travel without compromising safety. To do this, researchers developed and used air traffic simulators to study new concepts and tools for air traffic management, and developed new approaches to assurance of system-level properties including safety and efficiency

Evolutionary economic systems

In this program, complex systems and network theory was applied to economics and business to understand how evolutionary change occurs. Multi-agent modelling and associated simulation and calibration techniques were core components of the methodology used. We investigated new ways of testing for complex patterns in high frequency data, by studying trade-by trade data in stock markets and in electricity markets and seeking 'pattern matches' in artificially generated agent-based modelling data. We investigated new ways of dealing with spatial complexity in several contexts. Also visualisation techniques, rarely used in economics, were applied in a range of data-rich contexts to better understand the architecture and complex dynamics of systems.

Electricity networks and energy markets

This program investigated ways of integrating technical and market aspects of power systems with price dynamics to provide key insights into planning expansion of Australia's power transmission network. It also aimed to apply modern computational modelling techniques to the interface between the physical properties of the electricity system and its economic considerations. A particular focus was placed on the impacts of the transmission network and power station operation on electricity price behaviour and its influence on infrastructure investment decisions. It also looked into the importance of customer-load impact on system and market operations.

Dependable computer-based systems

This program was concerned with the development of modelling and analysis tools to ensure that dependability is designed into complex computer-based systems, particularly in areas such as transport, health and finance. There is a constant need for new methods and tools to enable engineers to ensure that such systems meet society's demands for dependability, safety and reliability. One of the tools, Behavior Trees, was successfully trialled by Raytheon Australia to analyse six large defence projects.

Complex systems theory and applications

In addition to the research programs described above, the ACCS included a number of projects addressing key problems for complex systems. The projects were concerned with the application of theory to solve issues in the design and operation of complex socio-technological systems, and with the development of new analysis techniques for complex systems.Cyberinfrastructure expert spells out cooperation Between US and Australia
Tiffany Fox, Calit2 Newsroom Web article, 5 March 2009.

References

External links

ARC Centre for Complex Systems
ACCS Website. {{authority control Systems science institutes Research organisations in Australia