Abstract
Large advances and rapid changes in informatics, telecommunication, and groupware technologies added to rapid increases in information spread, knowledge sharing, and communication speed, enable people/ groups/organizations feel “closer” to each other, not only by belonging to this “small wired village” but also by sharing virtually and almost permanently huge amounts of data and information; time and distance scales shrunk. Therefore, new forms of organizations are emerging to collaborate at international levels more effectively and efficiently. The networked organization and the virtual ones are such examples.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Extreme Collaboration: A radical new way for project teams of experts to work together in a technology rich environment, pioneered at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Live Simulation: Involves humans and/or equipment and activity in a setting where they would operate for real.
Computer Simulation: A computer program that attempts driving an abstract model of a particular system with suitable inputs and observing the corresponding outputs.
Modeling: An abstract representation of a system from the modeler’s viewpoint.aboratory University La Manouba, Tunisia, & University of Tunis, Tunisia
Agent: An agent is a physical or virtual entity which is able to perceive, reason, act, and communicate in its environment and which executes autonomous actions to reach certain goals.
Complex Systems: Refer to systems that are composed of a (large) number of parts that interact in a non-simple way and where the whole is more than the sum of the parts, and that does not have pure superposition of phenomena and processes.
Agent-Based Simulation: A computer simulation where simulated entities are modeled in terms of agents interacting with each other and with their environment.