This book addresses recent technological progress that has led to an increased complexity in many natural and artificial systems. The resulting complexity research due to the emergence of new properties and spatio-temporal interactions among a large number of system elements - and between the system and its environment - is the primary focus of this text. This volume is divided into three parts: Part one focuses on societal and ecological systems, Part two deals with approaches for understanding, modeling, predicting and mastering socio-technical systems, and Part three includes real-life examples. Each chapter has its own special features; it is a self-contained contribution of distinguished experts working on different fields of science and technology relevant to the study of complex systems. Advances in Complex Systems of Contemporary Reality: Societal, Environmental and Engineered Systems will provide postgraduate students, researchers and managers with qualitative and quantitative methods for handling the many features of complex contemporary reality.

This book addresses recent technological progress that has led to an increased complexity in many natural and artificial systems. The resulting complexity research due to the emergence of new properties and spatio-temporal interactions among a large number of system elements - and between the system and its environment - is the primary focus of this text. This volume is divided into three parts: Part one focuses on societal and ecological systems, Part two deals with approaches for understanding, modeling, predicting and mastering socio-technical systems, and Part three includes real-life examples. Each chapter has its own special features; it is a self-contained contribution of distinguished experts working on different fields of science and technology relevant to the study of complex systems. Advances in Complex Systems of Contemporary Reality: Societal, Environmental and Engineered Systems will provide postgraduate students, researchers and managers with qualitative and quantitative methods for handling the many features of complex contemporary reality.

The emergent ?eld of Intelligent Distributed Computing brings together two wellestablishedareasofComputerScience:DistributedComputingandC- putational Intelligence. Theoretical foundations and practical applications of Intelligent Distributed Computing set the premises for the new generation of intelligent distributed information systems. Intelligent Distributed Computing - IDC Symposium Series was started as an initiative of research groups from: (i) Systems Research Institute, P- ish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland and (ii) Software Engineering Department of the University of Craiova, Craiova, Romania. IDC aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners involved in all aspects of - telligent Distributed Computing. IDC is interested in works that are relevant for both Distributed Computing and Computational Intelligence, with sci- ti?c contribution in at least one of these two areas. IDC'2010 was the fourth event in the series and was hosted by IEEE Morocco Section in Tangier, - rocco duringSeptember16-18,2010. IDC'2010wascollocatedwith:(i)NATO summer schoolon"SoftwareAgents, Agent Systems andtheir Applications"; nd (ii) 2 International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems Technology and - mantics, MASTS'2010. The material published in this book is divided into three main parts: (i) 1 invited contribution; (ii) 28 contributions of IDC'2010 participants; and (iii) 4 contributions of MASTS'2010 participants. The response to IDC'2010 call for paper was generous. We received 53 submissions from 20 countries (we counted the country of each coauthor for each submitted paper). Each submission was carefully reviewed by at least 3 members of the IDC'2010 Program Committee.

The emergent ?eld of Intelligent Distributed Computing brings together two wellestablishedareasofComputerScience:DistributedComputingandC- putational Intelligence. Theoretical foundations and practical applications of Intelligent Distributed Computing set the premises for the new generation of intelligent distributed information systems. Intelligent Distributed Computing - IDC Symposium Series was started as an initiative of research groups from: (i) Systems Research Institute, P- ish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland and (ii) Software Engineering Department of the University of Craiova, Craiova, Romania. IDC aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners involved in all aspects of - telligent Distributed Computing. IDC is interested in works that are relevant for both Distributed Computing and Computational Intelligence, with sci- ti?c contribution in at least one of these two areas. IDC'2010 was the fourth event in the series and was hosted by IEEE Morocco Section in Tangier, - rocco duringSeptember16-18,2010. IDC'2010wascollocatedwith:(i)NATO summer schoolon"SoftwareAgents, Agent Systems andtheir Applications"; nd (ii) 2 International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems Technology and - mantics, MASTS'2010. The material published in this book is divided into three main parts: (i) 1 invited contribution; (ii) 28 contributions of IDC'2010 participants; and (iii) 4 contributions of MASTS'2010 participants. The response to IDC'2010 call for paper was generous. We received 53 submissions from 20 countries (we counted the country of each coauthor for each submitted paper). Each submission was carefully reviewed by at least 3 members of the IDC'2010 Program Committee.