Complexity Research in Australia

I have been doing a little reading in the complexity sciences of late, and have uncovered a network of local (Australia) organisations, projects, and labs focused on this field of research. I presume I had not detected their presence before given my focus on learning and adaptation processes. This subtle influence lead me through adaptationism vs selectionism, selectionist theories, adaptive system formalisms and ultimately to complex adaptive systems, all of which played a critical role in my doctoral dissertation. The difference is that complexity sciences is broader than adaptation by a complex system, where systems can have the attributes of complexity (impervious to reductionism, non-linear interactions between components, emergent phenomena, etc) irrespective of 'improving their performance in an environment' - such concerns are irrelevant in systems such as climate systems, cosmological systems, and other physical systems.

Anyway, I started with Professor David Green at Monash who has a long histroy of complex systems research, including a recent book on landscape ecology looking at networks in ecosystems. Green's lab has setup VLAB, a virtual laboratory for complexity research intended to market some of the more interactive aspects of the field to a broader audience including a large number of in-browser simulations (Java applets).

The Australian Research Council (ARC) appear to have at least three web presences for their interests in complex systems, specifically the Complex Open Systems Research Network (COSNet) that seems to be a network of researches involved in ARC funded complex research, and the ARC Center for Complex Systems (ACCS) hosted at UQ, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems (MASCOS). The COSNet site seems the more elaborate of the three, not limited to some insight into the history of the center, its vision that motivates the field of inquiry, and more interestingly example software. I am unclear of the relationship between the ACCS, MASCOS, and COSNet other than an obvious overlap in the source of funding and in some cases center members.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) also has an interest in complexity, demarcating complex systems science as an emerging science area, and setting up the CSIRO Centre for Complex Systems Science (CSS) directed by John Finnigan. The CSS motivate the field well with specific divisions in biological, physical, and social-ecological systems as well as the fundamentals. The 'emerging science area' site does have some interesting descriptions, presentations, and software downloads, although you have to dig deep into their mesh of pages.

Interestingly some of these organisations have emerged from theoretical physics an atmospheric research, which makes sense given the cross-disciplinary nature of the field and that what are now defined as complex systems are prevalent in such fields. This community seems larger and more motivated in this country (to do: test this assumption) than the field of computational intelligence that I previously chose to pursue, likely given the broader aims of complexity science that clearly have a strong overlap with (encompass?) my field.