service-oriented communities and fractal social organizations - models and concepts for a smarter...

Service-oriented Communities

and Fractal Social Organizations Models and concepts

for a Smarter Planet

Vincenzo De Florio

PATS / University of Antwerp & iMinds

Structure

• PATS/Adaptive-and-dependable systems

• Urgent need: Rethinking organizations

• Conjecture: Three key requirements

• A building block: Service-oriented community

• A model: Fractal social organizations

• Conclusions.

2 April 2, 2014 IBM Faculty Award Ceremony

PATS/Adaptive-and-Dependable Systems

• Systems designed

so as to maintain

functional and non-

functional identity

• Elasticity,

resilience,

antifragility

April 2, 2014 IBM Faculty Award Ceremony

Structure




• Building block: Service-oriented communities

• Model: Fractal social organizations

• Conclusions


Times, they are a-changin’…

6

Less resources

Higher peaks

of requests

Higher number

of users…

ICT

Energy product-

ion & distribution

Businesses

Transport of

goods & people

Water treatment

& distribution

Healthcare… Understanding & rethinking

our organizations is crucial!


With the meter in the red zone…

• …organizations that

appeared to work fine

reveal their limitations!

lose too much

use up too many resources

do not scale well

intolerable to changes

fail to address new aspects

→ Traditional approaches are

reaching structural limits. 7 April 2, 2014 IBM Faculty Award Ceremony

An example: healthcare

8

From www.fifthplay.com

• New context reveals the limitations of the

traditional approach April 2, 2014 IBM Faculty Award Ceremony

The healthcare crisis

• Unmanageability is approaching

How should we rethink healthcare?

• Starting point: Three observations:

Society at large is not part of the solution

Too many resources are wasted

No complex behaviors are expected from the

vast majority of the components

Organization (mostly hierarchical) is inflexible,

does not scale well, incurs huge costs…

9

Three key aspects: Society, organization, behaviour


Structure






• Conclusions


1) SOCIETY

11

• A purely technical

solution simply…

does not work!

Hardin’s

“Tragedy of

the Commons”

• Society must be part of the solution

• Society ≡ abundant, mobile “resources” able

to exercise complex action

• Need: engineer ways to tap into the nearly

unlimited sources of “social energy” of

our societies.

12

Three key requirements... 1) SOCIETY


26 November 2012 13 SITIS 2012

We have met the solution.

And the solution… is US!

• Organizational / architectural choices define

the features of our systems

• Classic model: quasi-closed, hierarchical

systems incapable of any complex

interoperability.

Three key requirements...2)ORGANIZATION


• Need: open smart organizations

Self-optimizing

Inter-organizational collective strategies

Mutualistic relationships; collaborative

sharing of data and resources…



• Conjecture: Biologically inspired distributed

organizations will play a key role in the

emergence of collective intelligent responses

Holarchies and fractal organizations

• “Simultaneously a part & a whole, a container & a

contained, a controller & a controlled” [Sou00]

Networks of peer-levels (members).



• Behavior: “change w.r.t. surroundings” [RW43]

• Purposeful, reactive, proactive behaviors

• Needs:

1. Resilient behaviors: change aiming at

preserving identity

2. Antifragile behaviors: change that preserves

identity AND learns how to improve

system-environment fit

Three key requirements... 3) BEHAVIOUR


Structure






• Conclusions


• Social organization built by explicitly

addressing the mentioned aspects

Taps into “social energy”

Node of a distributed organization

Supports complex resilient behaviours.

Service-oriented communities


21

Service provider Service

requester

Service registry

Starting point: classical SOA model

Publish Discover

Bind

Service

description


Reasoning & coordination

22

Member Member

Member w/

service & feature registry

Service

& feature

SoC building block

Publish Publish

Bind

Individual &

social concerns

optimization.

Capabilities

Policies

Availability

Location…

Events

People Devices

SOCIETY

BEHAVIOUR

OR

GA

NIZ

AT

ION


Example:

Mutual Assistance Community

23

ABC Shop

Smartdevices

Informal serviceprovider

Commercial vender

Doctor

Community

Access

A smart house

Coordinationcenter

(professional)

OSGIGateway

Create

OWL-S

OWL-S servicepublication

Service

Request



OWL-SMatcher

OSGI

bundle

OSGI

bundle

OSGI

bundle

More info: [DeB10]


• We created a model of the collective behavior

in a “flat” society of roles

• Society = multiset of roles (=integers)

• Example: S =

{0,0, 1,1, 2, 3,3, 4,4} =

2 GPs, 2 nurses, 1 patient, 2 sensors, 2 cars

SoC: Elements of a Model


• Example: Condition c takes place

(for instance, a patient has fallen)

• Consequence:

Intervention of 1 GP and 1 nurse.

Society S gets partitioned into two “blocks”:

L = {0, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4} and R = {0, 1, 2}.


26

• Inactive (L, c) ; Active (R, c)

• (L(t), R(t))t≥0 : a dynamic system that tells

how S evolves with time to respond to c’s

• How does the space of all possible L’s and

R’s look like?


27

Modularity

28

Other properties:

Modularity; Self-similarity


Structure






• Conclusions


• The SoC model provides us with key ideas

Modularity; self-similarity; fractal dimension…

• Major result: A hierarchy emerges from the

flat society!

We injected these ideas back into the model

Fractal Social Organizations


32

Member Member

Service

description

SoC as a building block

Publish Publish

Bind

Local

Reasoning & coordination

Individual &

social concerns

optimization

Capabilities

Policies

Availability

Location…

Events

People Devices Member Member Member Member

Exception Event propagation

Member w/

service & feature registry


SoC’s

A fractal organization of SoC’s


• Members publish events, attributes, policies…

• Events trigger analysis, planning, reaction,

and re-organization

• Exceptions propagate events to a higher level

• Concept applicable to various domains

AAL, crisis management, business organizations,

etc.

Fractal social organizations


iMinds project “LittleSister”

36

• We introduced the main ideas of fractal social

organizations

Three key “principles”: Society, behaviour,

organization

• Much is yet to be done

From principles to simulation & actual design

From design to deployment & testing

Formal models to guarantee resilience...

Etc etc!

Conclusions


• Much interest about this concept

IBM!

iMinds SuperMinds

Project proposals for H2020 (Crises

management; AAL)

• Other ideas at

http://eraclios.blogspot.be/

Conclusions





• Contact us through:

[email protected]

[email protected]

Thanks!

Conclusions


service-oriented communities and fractal social organizations - models and concepts for a smarter...

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