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

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

. 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 that may interact with one another. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication s ...

. 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 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 that may interact with one another. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication s ...

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 and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

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 The University of Queensland is a public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone universities, an i ...

in Brisbane, with nodes at

Griffith University Griffith University is a public university, public research university in South East Queensland on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of Australia. The university was founded in 1971, but was not officially opened until 1975. Griffith ...

in Brisbane,

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

in Melbourne, and

The University of New South Wales ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...

campus at the

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

in Canberra. International partners were the French

Centre National de la Research Scientifique Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

and the

Indian Institute of Technology The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are a network of engineering and technology institutions in India. Established in 1950, they are under the purview of the Ministry of Education of the Indian Government and are governed by the Instit ...

, and investigators from

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency that is responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial applications. CSIRO works with leading organisations arou ...

, 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, inc ...

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