Positioned at the metaphysical divide between civilization and wilderness, this thesis investigates the potential for symbiotic relationships among cultural, ecological and industrial systems in an effort to suggest alternative modes for human sustainability. The City of Hamilton, where steel and iron industries continue to scar the landscape, serves as the location for a speculative design intervention. Amongst existing urban structures, a hybrid form of industrial production is proposed to acknowledge society’s reliance on artificial devices. In turn, this hybrid form is integrated with natural ecological processes to demonstrate humanity’s dependence on the natural world. The first chapter positions the thesis within a discourse regarding the boundary between civilization and wilderness and their conventional dichotomy. The thesis is aligned to themes of ecological-artificial hybridization, which include the scientific application of biological metaphors, economic and manufacturing theories of industrial ecology, and architectural and design methodology. Chapter two employs Complex Systems methodology to structure an analysis of Hamilton’s ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ systems. The city is considered within ecological, historical, cultural, industrial and economic contexts, at local and regional scales. Chapter three proposes an urban plan for Hamilton that seeks to regenerate and integrate ecological, cultural and industrial systems. Within the framework of this plan, industrial ecosystems can coexist with public function and ecological infrastructure in close proximity. Though designed for long term application, the plan is intended to provide context for a more detailed and immediate intervention within the scope of the thesis. Chapter four proposes the implementation of a speculative urban design, as a central component of the urban plan. Sited on the Stelco pier, one of the largest and oldest steel producers in Canada, the design would reclaim a pivotal historical and physical location along the Hamilton waterfront. Regeneration of the heavily contaminated industrial site will be initiated with a phased program of remediation and managed ecological succession. The new science of industrial ecology will inform this new development. This approach is based on a shift from ‘open loop’ systems, in which material and energy flows dissipate through processes of waste creation, towards ‘closed loop’ systems in which energy and material are recycled. A new Instrumental Matrix is proposed where decentralized cultural, ecological and industrial systems are interwoven to create diverse and sustainable habitats for wildlife, people and industry.

Applying complex ecosystems theory, this thesis maps and analyzes the codependency of ecological and manufacturing flows affecting cities, the landscape, and the environment. Learning from this analysis, a prototype for a hybrid eco-manufacturing and urban park is proposed on degraded industrial lands. Its design is influenced by eco-industrial parks including Kalundborg and contemporary urban parks including La Villette, Downsview, and Fresh Kills. The prototype’s design is motivated by the mutating spatiality caused by contemporary trends in North American manufacturing and the degrading environmental state of the Great Lakes. The horizontal expansion of post-Fordist industrial areas on the urban periphery of North American cities has helped lead decentralization of core urban areas. This organization is becoming vulnerable to future energy and environmental concerns. In Hamilton, this trend has resulted in approximately 3,400 acres of underutilized contaminated land in its historical bayfront industrial areas. The hybrid park prototype will incubate reuse of a 576 acre site within this land by creating a network of eco-operations and public spaces. As part of North America’s Great Lakes, Hamilton Harbour drains into the head of Lake Ontario. The Port of Hamilton’s manufacturing activity strains the ecological systems of these lakes. Some of the most problematic discharge into Hamilton Harbour occurs at Windermere Basin. The basin is surrounded by a twilight industrial area that contaminates its water, soil, and air. This will be the location of the hybrid park prototype. Light manufacturing spaces that treat industrial contamination will be designed. Their organization will hypothesize a new form of urbanization based on environmentally benign uses of energy and materials.

In our complex world of today we see that the leader- and followership is getting harder and harder to “command and control” our organizations and our society. The awareness of the decision makers are often too fragmented in relation to the often complex real situations out there. The information is only flowing in organizational stovepipes and not across boundaries as it should today. The patterns of mutual complex dependencies have taken over and we have difficulties in controlling the consequences of our decisions. The relations over organizational borders are often weak and fragmented and the mutual trust is low. Technology has always been a driver for the society to evolve and our idea is that technology can be the main driver for evolving cross boundary collaboration in order to meet the demands of the world. Technology can be the main driver but only if we consider all of the important dimensions when implementing Information and communication technologies (ICT) In order to find the right method of using technology and scientific methods for achieving better cross boundary collaboration a number of data collection activities has been performed, described and analyzed in the work with this thesis. The activities has been diverse in its nature, brainstorming activities, qualitative interviews and a small case study has been combined in order to derive the result – a path forward against further research for a better cross boundary collaboration in our western community. The thesis now have identified a path forward and a scientific framework for taking all of our experiences, existing capabilities, earlier performed research one step further and lift it up to the cross boundary level in organizations and in our society. We have the chance of cultivating all of the properties, relations, amounts of information, and evolve our technology. This may be all that we need in order to achieve a more socially sustainable climate in leader- and followership in our organizations and society. Who knows … maybe we can change the world … or at least make a real difference somewhere!

Positioned at the metaphysical divide between civilization and wilderness, this thesis investigates the potential for symbiotic relationships among cultural, ecological and industrial systems in an effort to suggest alternative modes for human sustainability. The City of Hamilton, where steel and iron industries continue to scar the landscape, serves as the location for a speculative design intervention. Amongst existing urban structures, a hybrid form of industrial production is proposed to acknowledge society’s reliance on artificial devices. In turn, this hybrid form is integrated with natural ecological processes to demonstrate humanity’s dependence on the natural world. The first chapter positions the thesis within a discourse regarding the boundary between civilization and wilderness and their conventional dichotomy. The thesis is aligned to themes of ecological-artificial hybridization, which include the scientific application of biological metaphors, economic and manufacturing theories of industrial ecology, and architectural and design methodology. Chapter two employs Complex Systems methodology to structure an analysis of Hamilton’s ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ systems. The city is considered within ecological, historical, cultural, industrial and economic contexts, at local and regional scales. Chapter three proposes an urban plan for Hamilton that seeks to regenerate and integrate ecological, cultural and industrial systems. Within the framework of this plan, industrial ecosystems can coexist with public function and ecological infrastructure in close proximity. Though designed for long term application, the plan is intended to provide context for a more detailed and immediate intervention within the scope of the thesis. Chapter four proposes the implementation of a speculative urban design, as a central component of the urban plan. Sited on the Stelco pier, one of the largest and oldest steel producers in Canada, the design would reclaim a pivotal historical and physical location along the Hamilton waterfront. Regeneration of the heavily contaminated industrial site will be initiated with a phased program of remediation and managed ecological succession. The new science of industrial ecology will inform this new development. This approach is based on a shift from ‘open loop’ systems, in which material and energy flows dissipate through processes of waste creation, towards ‘closed loop’ systems in which energy and material are recycled. A new Instrumental Matrix is proposed where decentralized cultural, ecological and industrial systems are interwoven to create diverse and sustainable habitats for wildlife, people and industry.

Applying complex ecosystems theory, this thesis maps and analyzes the codependency of ecological and manufacturing flows affecting cities, the landscape, and the environment. Learning from this analysis, a prototype for a hybrid eco-manufacturing and urban park is proposed on degraded industrial lands. Its design is influenced by eco-industrial parks including Kalundborg and contemporary urban parks including La Villette, Downsview, and Fresh Kills. The prototype’s design is motivated by the mutating spatiality caused by contemporary trends in North American manufacturing and the degrading environmental state of the Great Lakes. The horizontal expansion of post-Fordist industrial areas on the urban periphery of North American cities has helped lead decentralization of core urban areas. This organization is becoming vulnerable to future energy and environmental concerns. In Hamilton, this trend has resulted in approximately 3,400 acres of underutilized contaminated land in its historical bayfront industrial areas. The hybrid park prototype will incubate reuse of a 576 acre site within this land by creating a network of eco-operations and public spaces. As part of North America’s Great Lakes, Hamilton Harbour drains into the head of Lake Ontario. The Port of Hamilton’s manufacturing activity strains the ecological systems of these lakes. Some of the most problematic discharge into Hamilton Harbour occurs at Windermere Basin. The basin is surrounded by a twilight industrial area that contaminates its water, soil, and air. This will be the location of the hybrid park prototype. Light manufacturing spaces that treat industrial contamination will be designed. Their organization will hypothesize a new form of urbanization based on environmentally benign uses of energy and materials.

Dynamic complexity occurs in every social structure. Film industry, as a type of creative industries, constitutes a dynamic environment where uncertainty is at high levels. This complexity of the environment renders the more traditional operations research models somewhat ineffective, and thus, requires a dynamic analysis. In this study, a model showing the dynamics of film exhibition is given. The interactions within and between the theatrical and the DVD sales channels are implemented by the model. Later on, the possible effects of piracy to the model are discussed, using the inferences obtained by the created model. The model is examined with scenario and sensitivity analysis. All the modeling studies are done with a commercial dynamic systems modeling software. The model also can be extended for the whole film industry, or for some other creative industries like the publishing industry.

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The main limitation of the CMAC (Cerebellar Model Articulation Controller) network in realistic applications for complex automated systems (robots, automated vehicles, etc...) is related to the required memory size. It is pertinent to remind that the memory used by CMAC depends firstly on the input signal quantification step and secondly on the input space dimension. For real CMAC based control applications, on the one hand, in order to increase the accuracy of the control the chosen quantification step must be as small as possible; on the other hand, generally the input space dimension is greater than two. In order to overcome the problem relating the memory size, how both the generalization and step quantization parameters may influence the CMAC's approximation quality has been discussed. Our goal is to find an optimal CMAC structure for complex dynamic systems' control. Biped robots and Flight control design for airbreathing hypersonic vehicles are two actual areas of such systems. We have applied the investigated concepts on these two quite different areas. The presented simulation results show that an optimal or sub-optimal structure carrying out a minimal modeling error could be achieved. The choice of an optimal structure allows decreasing the memory size and reducing the computing time as well

Complex systems are those which exhibit one or more of the following inter-related behaviours: 1. Nonlinear behaviour: the component parts do not act in linear ways, that is the superposition of the actions of the parts is not the output of the system. 2. Emergent behaviour: the output of the system may be inexpressible in terms of the rules or equations of the component parts. 3. Self-organisation: order appears from the chaotic interactions of individuals and the rules they obey. 4. Layers of description: in which a rule may apply at some higher levels of description but not at lower layers. 5. Adaptation: in which the environment becomes encoded in the rules governing the structure and/or behaviour of the parts (in this case strictly agents) that undergo selection in which those that are by some measure better become more numerous than those that are not as “fit”. A single cell is a complex system: we cannot explain all of its behaviour as simply the sum of its parts. Similarly, DNA structures, social networks, cancers, the brain, and living beings are intricate complex systems. This thesis tackles all of these topics from a complex systems approach. I have skirted some of the philosophical issues of complex systems and mainly focussed on appropriate tools to analyse these systems, addressing important questions such as: • What is the best way to extract information from DNA? • How can we model and analyse mutations in DNA? • Can we determine the likely spread of both viruses and ideas in social networks? • How can we model the growth of cancer? • How can we model and analyse interactions between genes in such living systems as the fruit fly, cancers, and humans? • Can complex systems techniques give us some insight into the human brain? / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1290759 / Thesis (Ph.D.)-- School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 2007