Engineering Socio-Technical

Urban Superorganisms

Franco Zambonelli Università di Modena e

Reggio Emilia

franco.zambonelli@unimore.it

E Pluribus Unum

Superorganisms

•  Colonies(of(ants,(termites,(etc.(

•  Organisms(composed(of(many(individual(ones(

•  That(exhibit(finalized(collec>ve(par>cipa>ve(behaviors((or(“collec>ve(intelligence”)(

Urban Superorganisms

•  Can(our(urban(environments(become(superorganisms?(

•  What(could(this(actually(mean?(

•  Why(socioEtechnical?(

Smart Cities: From Senseable…

•  Sensing what’s happening – Via ICT devices – And social

networks

•  To better understand (via data analysis) – City and social

dynamics – At a global level

Sense%

Understand%(compute)%

…To Actuable

•  We can “shape” other than understand – Actuating ICT

devices – Steering human

actions

•  Closing the loop that enables finalized urban behaviors possible

Sense%

Understand%(compute)%

Act%(Steer)%

…To Actuable

•  We can “shape” other than understand – Actuating ICT

device – Steering human

actions

•  Closing the loop that enables finalized urban behaviors possible

Sense%

Understand%(compute)%

Act%(Steer)%

Urban Superorganisms: ICT Side •  An ICT-enriched urban environment with rich

sensing, actuating, and computing (SAC) capabilities –  Sensing: sensor networks, tags, smart objects,etc. – Actuating: traffic controllers, public digital displays,

critical infrastructures – Computing: highly distributed and decentralized, with

inter-connected computational engines everywhere

Urban Superorganisms: Human Side •  People with smart phones or alike (or whatever will

appear in the future as wearable devices) contribute to such SAC capabilities –  Sensing: the 5 senses + smart phones – Actuating: the body – Computing: human & social intelligence

Urban Superorganisms: Putting All Together

•  The ICT and Human/Social level blurred to the point of invisibility:

•  Complementing each other in a process of high value co-creation

•  In the resulting overall “urban organism”, we can achieve very high-levels of collective –  Perception –  Awareness –  Action

•  Dramatically changing the way we move, live, work, and play, in our towns

Living in a Superorganism •  Collective vs individual awareness

–  Reflecting on ourselves as members of a community

•  Be capable of understanding and acting together in real time –  Immediate feedback to/from the community

Collective Mobility, for Instance •  Mobility per se :: steer for car, bike, ride sharing •  Childcare :: steering & monitoting children on their way to

school •  Exhibitions :: steer to avoid crowd or suggest paths •  All of these requiring collective sensing awareness and action •  And can (should?) rely on bio-inspired solutions

The SAPERE Project •  SAPERE �Self-aware Pervasive

Service Ecosystems� –  EU FP7 FET –  Starting October 1st 2010, lasting

3 years

•  Key Challenges –  To define and implement a

framework for adaptive service ecosystems

– Models + Middleware –  Experience with pervasive urban

services and pervasive displays

The SAPERE Approach •  Nature-inspired (Biochemical)

–  Simply metaphor for combining/aggregating services in a spontaneous way

– Whether human or ICT ones

•  Spatially-situated – To match the

nature of urban scenarios

– Adaptive –  Spontaneous

reconfiguration of activities and interactions

The SAPERE Architecture •  Humans & ICT Devices

–  Interact by injecting/consuming service/data components

•  Service Components –  Execute in a sort virtual �Spatial substrate�

–  Moving, acting, composing, as from eco-laws

•  Eco Laws –  Rule local activities and

interactions –  Apply based on state of

local components –  Self-organization of

collective behavior

The SAPERE Eco-laws •  Identification of 4 primitive eco-laws

–  Forming a necessary and complete set –  Upon which to build more complex

self-organization patterns •  The Eco-laws

–  Bonding: sort of chemical bond, local connection of LSAs – subsuming discovery and invocation

–  Spreading: diffusion of LSAs to neighbors, to enable non-local interactions

–  Aggregation: sort of fusion, primitive data reduction based on ODI functions

–  Decay: evaporation and deletion of information, to perform decentralized garbage collection in a decentralized way

bond

spread

aggr

decay

The SAPERE Self-org Patterns •  Built upon the set of basic

eco-laws –  Which can be

considered sorts of “primitive patterns”

•  To define complex bio-inspired self-organization and self-composition behaviours –  Counterproof of the

completeness and efficacy of the basic set

Steering Mobility in SAPERE

Programming SAPERE Apps •  Have SAPERE middleware launched

in the nodes to be involved •  Write agents that inject LSAs

–  To express services/functionalities they made available

–  To request (formal fields) the services/data/funtionalities they requires

•  Exploit self-org patterns to realize specific distributed functionaities –  Gradients, Chemiotaxis,

Context completion, etc. •  Let the SAPERE space react by

triggering eco-laws and react to events (bond, spread, etc.)

Steering Behaviors in SAPERE with an Ecosystem of Displays

Open Challenges !  There are many challenges to solve

!  Engineering and programming tools !  Patterns of self-organization !  Top-down vs bottom-up approaches !  Incenvitives for participation

!  Just to mention a few…

Challenge: Engineering Tools !  Designing

!  How to represent collective urban situations? !  How to turn it into collective awareness? !  How to represent urban goals and plan of actions? !  Role of existing social networks in future ecosystems?

!  Programming !  What programming languages and abstractions? !  How to trigger/deploy specific urban behaviors? !  How to measure the goodness/badness of behaviors?

Challenge: Patterns !  Given the basic sense-understand-act loop schemes

!  At urban scale, multidutes of local/nested loops co-exists !  What are the architectural patterns by which such loops

can be organized? !  What is the impact of different patterns on urban

behaviors? !  To what extent we can “design” the shape of such

loops?

Feedback loop 1 (in brown) Feedback loop 2 (in green)

Token

Next element to execute

Breakpoint

Challenge: Top-down/Bottom-up !  Bottom-up self-organization

and adaptation !  Driven by emergence (often

implicit, e.g., stigmergic) feedback loop in interactions

!  Very robust and efficient !  Cannot by designed by

definition !  Top-down self-adaptation

!  Explicit engineering of feedback loops

!  Needed to enforce specific behaviors?

!  How we can make the two co-exists?

Traffic Steering: Top-down Control

Traffic Steering: Bottom-up Control

By Prof. Peter Stone @UTA.edu

Traffic Steering: Mixing Top Down and Bottom up

The Roundabout Lesson: Engineering the environment •  The(shape(of(the(environment(can(affect(the(behavior(of(selfEorganizing(components(– Without(undermining(their(autonomy(

– Without(losing(the(advantages(of(selfEorganiza>on(

–  Yet(promo>ng(more(predictability(

•  And(enabling(topEdown(engineering(– The(shape(you(give(is(the(behavior(you(get(

Engineering the Environment in SAPERE

•  What does it means to “shape” the environment –  Shaping its perception by components –  Equivalent to the distort the way LSAs are perceived and propagate

•  Very easy to implement but… –  Still to be verified

its effectiveness and the ease of engineering top-down behaviors in this way

Engineering the Environment in SAPERE

•  What does it means to “shape” the environment –  Shaping its perception by components –  Equivalent to the distort the way LSAs are perceived and propagate

•  Very easy to implement but… –  Still to be verified

its effectiveness and the ease of engineering top-down behaviors in this way

Conclusions •  Our future cities will become sorts of superorganisms

•  Human & ICT tightly coupled •  Collective participation and action •  Bio-inspired solutions at work in future cities

•  How can we engineer these? •  SAPERE is doing some steps in the right direction •  Yet there are a lot of challenges to solve