Measuring Self-Organisation in Distributed Systems by External Observation

Inhalt:
Self-organisation has been identified as key enabler to master complexity in technical systems. Many definitions and metrics have been proposed to provide a formal basis. Since most of these concepts do not consider a dynamic organisation perspective from a systems engineering point of view, this paper analyses concepts to fill this gap. Therefore, we discuss the key aspects of self-organisation viewed as a semi-autonomous process, which guides the system after a disturbance back into the target space. Based on this concept, we present a novel approach to quantify self-organisation. This approach serves as basis for a potential comparison of similar systems in terms of their degree of self-organisation.