Self-Adaptation in Collective Adaptive Systems

An adaptive system is currently on spot: collective adaptive system (CAS), which is inspired by the socio-technical systems. CASs are characterized by a high degree of adaptation, giving them resilience in the face of perturbations. In CASs, highest degree of adaptation is self-adaptation. The overarching goal of CAS is to realize systems that are tightly entangled with humans and social structures. Meeting this grand challenge of CASs requires a fundamental approach to the notion of self-adaptation. To this end, taking advantage of the categorical approach we establish, in this paper, a firm formal basis for modeling self-adaptation in CASs.