The senate of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) has approved a new priority program (SPP) about
Organic Computing with a maximal duration of six years.
The mission of Organic Computing is to tame complexity in technical systems by providing appropriate degrees of freedom for
self-organized behaviour adapting to changing requirements of the execution environment, in particular with respect to human needs.
According to this vision an organic computing system should be aware of its own capabilities, the requirements of the environment,
and it should be equipped with a number of "self-x" properties allowing for the anticipated adaptiveness and for a reduction in the
complexity of system management. These self-x properties are self-organisation, self-configuration, self-optimization, self-healing,
self-protection and self-explanation.
To achieve these ambitious goals new methods, new techniques, and new system architectures have to be developed.
Their potential and relevance should be demonstrated with respect to demanding application scenarios.
The individual research projects will focus on the following topics:
Controlled self-organisation in technical systems Emergent behaviour in technical systems Insights about the behaviour of natural and artificial complex systems shall be used to open up the necessary degrees of freedom for self-organized behaviour of technical systems. This requires projects on the theory of complex systems, investigating the possibilities to establish goal-oriented emergent processes and, in particular, looking at the problems of security and stability of self-organized technical systems. Methods are needed for controlling emergent behaviour, i.e. to direct a system towards desired emergent behaviour and to detect and prevent undesirable emergence.
Technologies for Organic Computing New base technologies are needed to support the technical utilisation of the principles of self-organisation in the implementation of organic computing systems. Complete organic systems will need adequate (multi-level) system architectures. Therefore, an essential objective is to build up a versatile toolbox containing balanced concepts, methods, and tools for the design and implementation of organic computer systems. Furthermore, an evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of organic systems will require new methods and metrics for an appropriate system analysis.
The first phase of the priority program will concentrate on research to obtain fundamental insights into the principles of self-organisation and to develop of a technological basis for organic computing systems. Ideally, every project should focus on one of the major topics listed above, but it should have strong links to promising aspects of the complementary domain. In every research proposal the aspects of self-organisation must be clearly identifiable. The priority program does not allow for explicit design of application systems. But it will be indispensable to evaluate the anticipated methods and technologies of OC with respect to technical application areas. All projects should be planned for a duration of two years, but they should have a longer perspective.
Proposals (in English) for the first two years of the program must be available quintuplicate in the office of the DFG on October 31, 2004 (Attachments in triplicate, everything punched, but not stapled. In addition, the cover sheet should be sent by email to
).
Questions about Organic Computing are answered by the co-ordinator of the SPP Prof. Dr. Hartmut Schmeck,
Institut AIFB, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), email:
, phone +49 721 608 42 42. For questions on setting up the proposal please call Dr.
Gerit Sonntag, phone +49 228 885 24 99.
