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Emergence and refinement

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Formal Aspects of Computing

Abstract

Emergent behaviour—system behaviour not determined by the behaviours of system components when considered in isolation—is commonplace in multi-agent systems, particularly when agents adapt to environmental change. This article considers the manner in which Formal Methods may be used to authenticate the trustworthiness of such systems. Techniques are considered for capturing emergent behaviour in the system specification and then the incremental refinement method is applied to justify design decisions embodied in an implementation. To demonstrate the approach, one and two-dimensional cellular automata are studied. In particular an incremental refinement of the ‘glider’ in Conway’s Game of Life is given from its specification.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Institute for Software Technology, United Nations University, Macao, SAR China

    J. W. Sanders

  2. School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Graeme Smith

Authors
  1. J. W. Sanders
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  2. Graeme Smith
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Graeme Smith.

Additional information

Eerke Boiten, John Derrick, Dong Jin Song and Steve Reeves

J. W. Sanders acknowledges financial support from the ARC Centre for Complex Systems (ACCS), Australia, and the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund under the PEARL project, grant number 041/2007/A3.

Graeme Smith acknowledges the support of Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant DP110101211.

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Sanders, J.W., Smith, G. Emergence and refinement. Form Asp Comp 24, 45–65 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00165-011-0190-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00165-011-0190-7

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