Optimization of a dynamic and stochastic system of systems

Imagine an interconnected web of nodes as points and lines joining each point as the means of physical and information transfer. Each node is a subsystem in itself and is adaptive to its environment of other nodes and its own internal environment. In this type of scenario where the information is processed and is changed due to influence of the nodes external to a particular node and is also influenced by the internal environment of the nodes itself makes the architecture of the system is dynamic and is ever changing. The evolutionary nature of the system makes this a dynamic nonlinear system where the whole is always greater than its parts. To take care of nonlinearity of the system and its evolutionary architecture the system has to be modeled in the lines of agent based modeling. There is also physical transfer of materials and / or information between the nodes which makes the system even more complex and decision making in this type of situation more vulnerable. The state of the nodes here is stochastic in nature and the future state of the nodes is dependent on many states of the internal environment of the nodes and the external nodes. The stochasticity of the nodes gives rise to the non-linearity of the network. This nonlinearity is even pronounced when we consider an intelligent agent to be present at the nodes which have the ability to adapt and take discourses of action according to the situation at hand. In this regard it is also important to mention that there is node prioritization for information and material flow. The prioritization of the nodes makes the problem even more complex and tough to handle. This type of system is found in the natural and artificial world alike. In the natural world we can think of any biological system as a system of systems like what is described here. In the artificial world any aerodrome management system is a good example of this kind of system. I would like to extend my overview more in the lines of an airlines management system. In an aerodrome there are incoming flights which can be thought like a node as described above and the ATC (air traffic controller) as the central node that acts as a mediating node taking decisions about which flight to land and take off (Physical transfer between nodes). Each node here has a physical existence and the state of the node is determined by the decisions taken by the human element in each of the nodes. The architecture of the system is more like a web moving dynamically in space and the system evolving in time. The airplanes in the air have a priority of landing and cannot stay infinite time in the air and at the same time the landed aircrafts must be airborne so that the site can be cleared for further landings. This is a typical scenario every day in the aerodrome and the air traffic controllers have to dynamically allocate time slots for take offs and landings. Not only do they have to allocate time slots but also they have to optimize everything happening in the aerodrome. Optimization in this type scenario is beyond the methodologies of traditional Operations Research and hence system dynamics and networking science has to be called into service to tackle this kind of highly dynamic network problem. To tackle this kind of system of systems we need an agent based modeling paradigm to model and optimize the network. This author proposes to model such kind of network in the generic sense so that it can be used in different scenarios using meta heuristics and agent based modeling. Modeling is not the only important part of the problem. Specific system laws need to be written so as to tackle and optimize such dynamic non-linear network. This author also proposes to implement the system so produced in real life scenario to experiment and validate its workability.