CRiCS is a partner of COSNet - ARC Complex Open Systems Research
Network http://www.complexsystems.net.au/
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How are bush fires important in evolution? Why is lightning like a river? How do we understand social change in the midst of rapid
technological change?
How do we cope with such vast amounts of information? We simply can no longer rely on human processing. We need more and more computer mediated and intelligent assistance. We need information agents, which learn, adapt and negotiate with one another. Understanding how to build such agents is a problem not just concerned with the Internet. It underlies the whole area of adaptivity and the nature of communication. It is these fundamental principles of intelligent, adaptive systems that are the focus of our research centre. The essence of quantitative prediction in complex systems is simulation - modelling low lying rules of engagement and behaviour and looking at the emergent results. But with our increasing capacity to simulate the many complex systems of today's world comes a further challenge: to understand how complexity impacts on our thinking and grasp of social systems. Complexity becomes a powerful tool of social analysis and potentially a new paradigm for the humanities, a paradigm useful at a more abstract level. Many social and economic systems are more easily and better understood from this complexity perspective. Complexity becomes a theoretical framework for reasoning about human society. Complex Systems at Charles Sturt University goes back to 1995 with a group of researchers across all three campuses at Albury, Bathurst and Wagga Wagga. The Australian Complex Systems Conference (now held across Asia) took place in Albury in 1996 and the first biennial Complex Systems Research Summer School took place in Bathurst in 1998. Since those early years the Centre for Research in Complex Systems has grown to include aspects of business modelling and the social systems theory, as shown in the figure below. It has attracted around $2 million in external funding over this period.
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