service-oriented communities: models and concepts towards fractal social organizations
DESCRIPTION
Presentation written by V. De Florio and presented by the author at the SITIS 2012 Conference on 2012-11-26TRANSCRIPT
Service-oriented Communities: Models and Concepts towards
Fractal Social Organizations
Vincenzo De Florio, Antonio Coronato,
Mohamed Bakhouya, Giovanna Di Marzo
PATS / University of Antwerp & iMinds
Structure
• Urgent need: Rethinking organizations
• Conjecture: Three key aspects to be
addressed
• A design: Service-oriented communities
• Models
• Conclusions
2 26 November 2012 SITIS 2012
Times, they are a-changin’…
3
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!
26 November 2012 SITIS 2012
With the meter in the red zone…
• …organizations that appeared to work fine
now reveal limitations
…they use up too many resources
…they do not scale well
…they are intolerable to changes
…they fail to address new aspects
→ Traditional approaches are reaching
structural limits.
4 26 November 2012 SITIS 2012
An example: healthcare
26 November 2012 5 SITIS 2012
From www.fifthplay.com
• New context reveals the limitations of the
traditional approach
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 behaviours are expected from the
vast majority of the components
Organization (mostly hierarchical) is inflexible,
does not scale well, implies huge costs…
6 26 November 2012 SITIS 2012
Three key aspects: Society, organization, behaviour
• A purely technical solution simply does not
work
See e.g. Hardin’s “Tragedy of Commons”
• Society must be part of the solution
• Society abundant, mobile “resources” able
to exercise complex action
In particular, collaboration.
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Three key aspects... 1) SOCIETY
• Organizational / architectural choices define
the features of our systems
Centralized, hierarchical, heterarchical,
distributed…
• Distributed: e.g. holarchies & fractal orgs
Biologically inspired
Members are “simultaneously a part and a whole,
a container and a contained, a controller and a
controlled” [Sou00]
Three key aspects... 2) ORGANIZATION
8 26 November 2012 SITIS 2012
• I.e., “change w.r.t. surroundings” [RWB43]
• Ability to
introspect,
analyze and locate limiting factors w.r.t.
environmental conditions
learn how to reconfigure and reshape oneself
so as to match a “dynamically varying set of
environmental conditions” [DeB10]:
• Complex, collective, adaptive behaviours.
Three key aspects... 3) BEHAVIOUR
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• A social organization built by explicitly
addressing the mentioned aspects
Taps into “social energy”
Makes use of a distributed organization
Supports complex adaptive and autonomic
behaviours.
Service-oriented communities
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11
Service provider Service
requester
Service registry
Starting point: classical SOA model
Publish Discover
Bind
Service
description
26 November 2012 SITIS 2012
Reasoning & coordination
12
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
26 November 2012 SITIS 2012
SOCIETY
BEHAVIOUR
OR
GA
NIZ
AT
ION
Example:
Mutual Assistance Community
13
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-S servicepublication
OWL-S servicepublication
OWL-SMatcher
OSGI
bundle
OSGI
bundle
OSGI
bundle
26 November 2012 SITIS 2012
More info: [DeB10]
Mutual Assistance Community
• Organization based on a single SoC building block
Aim: optimally employing devices & human beings with diverse capabilities, backgrounds, and information so as to organize intelligent responses to AAL-related problems
Not just safety nets: • Reducing social isolation of elderly people
• Reducing costs – best utilizing the social resources
Self-serve paradigm (mutually satisfying requests).
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15
Member Member
Service
description
SoC as a fractal social organization
Publish Publish
Bind
Local
Reasoning & coordination
Individual &
social concerns
optimization
Capabilities
Policies
Availability
Location…
Events
People Devices
26 November 2012 SITIS 2012
Member Member Member Member
Exception Event propagation
Member w/
service & feature registry
SoC as a fractal social organization
26 November 2012 16 SITIS 2012
SoC as a fractal social organization
26 November 2012 17 SITIS 2012
Member Member Member
Member
Member Member L0 Member
Member
L1 Member
Member L0 Member
Member Member L0 Member
Member Member
L0 Member
L1 Member
L2 Member
• 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.
Service-oriented Community
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• Societies as multisets of roles, e.g.
{GP2, nurse2, patient8}
• Situations induce a partitioning, e.g.
L = {GP, nurse, patient7}
R = {GP, nurse, patient}
Left side is inactive, right side is active (dealing
with situation at hand)
Active part of society = community.
Elements of formal model (1/2)
26 November 2012 19 SITIS 2012
• Evolution can be modelled as the dynamics of
sets L(t) and R(t):
(L(t),R(t)) t ≥ 0
• A way to represent this dynamics is through
permutations of the society multiset
• This reveals certain properties.
Elements of formal model (2/2)
26 November 2012 20 SITIS 2012
Self-similarity
26 November 2012 21 SITIS 2012
• Activity: «situation : action»
• Action: ( role → step )
• E.g. «fallen : (role-δ1 → alarm(fallen))»
• A role-δ1 actor needs to be located
OK: new community
KO: exception
• n actions n communities / exceptions
• More information in the paper.
Elements of operational model
26 November 2012 22 SITIS 2012
• We introduced the main ideas of SoC, a
fractal social organization based on 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.
Conclusions
26 November 2012 23 SITIS 2012
• [RWB43] Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow, "Behavior,
Purpose and Teleology". Philosophy of Science, 10(1943), S. 18–24
• [DeB10] V. De Florio, C. Blondia, "Service-oriented Communities: Visions and
Contributions towards Social Organizations", Proc. of MONET 2010, LNCS Vol.
6428/2010
• [Ha1968] Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons", Science, Vol. 162 (Dec.
1968)
• [Sou00] P. Sousa, N. Silva, T. Heikkila, M. Kallingbaum and P. Valcknears, P.
“Aspects of Co-operation in Distributed Manufacturing Systems”. Studies in
Informatics and Control Journal, 9 (2), 2000
• V. De Florio, "The HeartQuake Dynamic System", Complex Systems, Vol. 9, No.
2, April 1995, pp. 91-114. (Complex Systems Publications, Champaign, IL)
• V. De Florio, "Permutation Numbers", Complex Systems, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2005
(Complex Systems Publications, Champaign, IL).
References
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