Living with Complexity

As evolution of our Universe takes its course, the ecological, social, political, cultural and economic environments within which we live and work increase in complexity. The change became particularly noticeable since we began a transition from nation-centred industrial economies to the information-based global economy. A considerable part of the globe is
now interconnected by the Internet, information flows rapidly and trading in services,
and in particular, in knowledge-based services, gradually replaces trading in goods as
the main source of wealth

I use the word Complexity here as a scientific term denoting a perpetually changing situation characterised by a large number of different autonomous elements engaged in rich interaction; such as global market consisting of a vast number of suppliers and consumers rapidly matching supply to demand and then, as rapidly, changing previously agreed matches, each player trying to increase his/her gain.

To survive and prosper in the complex world the participants must learn the skills of Adaptation and Resilience. They must react rapidly to unexpected events and reorganise their activities with the aim of taking advantage of new opportunities and protecting themselves from new threats. Cooperation with peers is often a good option. The best part of being adaptable and resilient is that it makes working at the edge of chaos highly enjoyable.... read more

 

Curriculum Vitae

Professor George Rzevski is an academic, entrepreneur and consultant. He is Professor Emeritus, Department of Design and Innovation at The Open University, Milton Keynes; Visiting Professor of Multi-Agent Systems at Cologne University of Applied Sciences and Visiting Scholar at Westminster Business School, where he is involved in a number of advanced research projects in the fields of Complexity and Multi-Agent Systems. Professor Rzevski is Founder and Chief Scientist of Magenta Corporation Ltd, London, an international company developing and marketing multi-agent systems for applications such as logistics, e-commerce, text understanding and knowledge discovery and Chairman of Rzevski Solutions Ltd, London, providing advice and solutions for a wide variety of organisational and Information Technology problems in private companies and administrations.

Before founding Magenta Corporation, George was Professor in Department of Design and Innovation at The Open University, Milton Keynes, where he was Director, Centre for the Design of Intelligent Systems. His Centre was well funded by grants from government and industry and his Department was rated 5 out of 5 in the two Research Assessment Exercises. As a tribute to his successful research career, the University established recently a new “George Rzevski Complexity Laboratory”. At The Open University George pioneered undergraduate education in intelligent mechatronics launching a course in which every student experimented with his/her personal intelligent robot.

Professor Rzevski has published widely and delivered keynote papers at numerous international conferences. He supervised PhD projects and acted as external examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in many UK university departments. Until recently he has been editor-in-chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering, published by Elsevier.

He has assessed candidates for tenure on behalf of a number of American universities, including Stamford, Ohio and Texas; examined over 30 PhD students from universities in the UK and abroad, including Cambridge University, Imperial College, LSE, Cardiff University, Singapore University, and National University of Ireland.

For several years George has delivered a regular series of lectures on Economic, Social and Cultural Implications of Global Networks to postgraduate students at London School of Economics.

Throughout his academic career George worked as a consultant for private companies, government administrations and EU on various issues related to advanced information technologies.

He began his academic career in the UK at Kingston Polytechnic, later Kingston University, where he was Professor and Founder Head of Information Systems. At Kingston he launched new undergraduate and postgraduate courses aimed at bringing together disciplines of Information Technology (IT) and Business and led a successful research centre in Computer-Integrated Manufacturing. The Centre worked in close cooperation with leading high-technology companies, including ICL, Xerox, IBM and many others.

George is of Russian origin. His family emigrated from Russia in 1918 and settled in Serbia, where he was born in 1932 and educated at the University of Belgrade. In his late twenties he was given an opportunity to establish a new design office in Belgrade. He hand-picked his staff employing only talented young engineers and the design bureaux grew under his leadership into a major organisation capable of undertaking large-scale electrical engineering projects. At the age of 29 George was Chief Designer of all major railways electrification schemes in Yugoslavia.

George moved to the UK in the 1960s where he attended a postgraduate refresher course at Imperial College before joining Kingston.

Selected Papers:

2006 | Papers

Karunananda, A S, Rzevski, G, "Ontological Modelling: State of the Art, Unresolved Issues and New Research Directions". A draft paper written October 2004, revised October 2006.

Rzevski, G, "Multi-Agent Technology: An Introduction". Lecture Notes written June 2000, revised September 2006.

Rzevski, G, “Practical Applications of Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems”. Keynote paper, BIOPoM University of Westminster Conf., June 2006.

Rzevski, G, “On Emergent Properties of Complex Systems”. Keynote paper, Volga Conference on Complex Adaptive Systems, Samara, Russia, June 2006.

Rzevski, G, “Complex Adaptive Software Systems as the New Paradigm for the 21st Century”. Keynote paper, South East ICT Conference, Belgrade, May 2006.

Rzevski, G. , Skobelev, P. "Emergent Intelligence in Multi-Agent Schedulers".A draft paper written in May 2006.

G. Rzevski, J. Himoff, P. Skobelev. “Magenta Technology: A Family of Multi-Agent Intelligent Schedulers”.Workshop on Software Agents in Information Systems and Industrial Applications (SAISIA). February 2006. Fraunhofer IITB

2005 | Papers

Rajveer Basra, Kevin Lü, George Rzevski, Petr Skobelev. “Resolving Scheduling Issues of the London Underground Using a Multi-Agent System”.V Marik, R W Brennan, Michal Pechoucek (eds): Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems for Manufacturing, LNAI 3593, Springer, 2005, pp. 188-196.

Rzevski, G. “Ontology and Relativity”.Keynote paper, Volga Conference on Complex Adaptive Systems, Samara, Russia, 2005.

2004 | Papers

Morgan, G, Rzevski, G., Wiese, P.: “Multi-Agent Control of Variable Geometry Axial Turbo Compressors”.Journal of Systems and Control Engineering, issue I3 vol. 218 (2004), pp. 157-171.

Rzevski, G. “Designing Complex Engineering Systems”.Keynote paper, Volga Conference on Complex Adaptive Systems, Samara, Russia, 2004.

2003 | Papers

Rzevski, G, Skobelev, P, Batishchev, S, Orlov, A.: “A Framework for Multi-Agent Modelling of Virtual Organisations”.In Camarinha-Matos, L M and Afsarmanesh, H (eds), Processes and foundations for Virtual Organisations, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003, pp. 253-260.

Rzevski, G.: “On conceptual Design of Intelligent Mechatronic Systems”. Mechatronics 13 (2003) pp. 1029 – 1044.

Rzevski, G: “Multi-Agent Systems: The Myth or Practical Reality?” Keynote paper, Volga Conference on Complex Adaptive Systems, Samara, Russia, 2003.

2002 | Papers

Hlupic, Vlatka, Pouloudi, Nancy and Rzevski, George: "Knowledge Management in E-commerce: The Use of Intelligent Agents",Proceedings of the ITI’02 (Information Technology Interface) Conference, Cavtat, June 2002, Croatia, SRCE University Computing Centre, pp. 349-356.

Hlupic, Vlatka, Pouloudi, Anasthasia and Rzevski, George: "Towards an integrated approach to Knowledge Management: Hard, Soft and Abstract issues",Knowledge and Process Management, the Journal of Corporate Transformation, 9(0), pp.1-14, 2002.

Alwis, Dee, Hlupic, Vlatka and Rzevski, George: "Designing Organisational Memory in Knowledge Intensive Companies: A Case Study", in "Knowledge and Business Process Management", (Ed. By Hlupic V.), Idea Group Publishing, 2002.

Hlupic, Vlatka, Pouloudi, Nancy and Rzevski, George: "Intelligent Agents for Knowledge Management in E-Commerce: Opportunities and Challenges", in "Knowledge and Business Process Management", (Ed. Hlupic V.), Idea Group Publishing, 2002.

2001 | Papers

Rzevski, George, Skobelev, Peter and Korablin, Mikhail: “Multi-Agent Models of Networked Organisations”. Proc. of Intern. Workshop "New Models of Business: Managerial Aspects and Enabling Technology", School of Management of Saint Petersburg State University, Russia, June 28-29, 2001, pp. 46-49.

Iwkushkin, K., Minakov, I., Rzevski, G. and Skobelev, P.: “Magenta Multi-Agent Engine for Desktop Applications”. Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Computer Science and Information Technologies CSIT 2001, Ufa, Russia, 21-26 September, 2001. - Ufa State Aviation Technical University - Institute JurInfoR-MSU, Vol. 1: Regular Papers, 2001, 81-89 pp.

Batishchev, S., Iwkushkin, K., Minakov, I., Skobelev, P. and Rzevski, G.: “Magenta Multi-Agent Systems: Engines, Ontologies and Applications”. Proc. of the 3rd Intern. Workshop on Computer Science and Information Technologies CSIT 2001, Ufa, Russia, 21-26 September, 2001. - Ufa State Aviation Technical University - Institute JurInfoR-MSU, Vol. 1: Regular Papers, 2001, 73-80 pp.

Alwis, Dee, Hlupic, Vlatka and Rzevski, George: "Designing Organisational Memory in Knowledge Intensive Companies: A Case Study", Proceedings of the UKAIS 2001, UK Academy of Information Systems Conference, Portsmouth, UK, April 2001.

2000 | Papers

Rzevski, George, Pouloudi, Nancy and Hlupic, Vlatka: "The Scope and Applications of Knowledge Management Research: An Integrated Approach". In Edwards, J & Kidd, J. (Eds.) The Knowledge Management Conference (KMAC 2000) Knowledge Management beyond the hype: looking towards the new millennium. Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK, 17-18 July 2000, pp. 304-312, 2000. (ISBN 0903440210).

1998 | Papers

Rzevski, G, Prasad, K, “The Synergy of Learning Organisations and Flexible Information Technology”. AI and Society volume 12, pp 87-96. 1998.

Andreev, V., Volhontsev, D., Iwkushkin, K., Karyagin, D., Minakov, I., Rzevski, G., Skobelev, P.: “Multi-Agent System for Knowledge Management”. Proc. of XIII Intern. Conference on the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering. Ireland, Galway, 1998, pp. 91-96.

Rzevski, G, “Engineering Design for the Next Millennium: The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence”. The 86th Thomas Hawksley Memorial Lecture, IMechE, 9 December 1998.

Adey, R. A., Rzevski, G, Noland, P. (eds), “Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering XIII”, Computational Mechanics Publications, 1998.

Brace, G, Rzevski, G, ERP – “Elephants Rarely Pirouette”. Logistics Focus Vol6 No9 1998.

1997 | Papers

Rzevski, G, “A Methodology and a Virtual Design Studio for Designing Mechatronics Systems”. Proceedings of Mechatronics Conference, Duisburg, Germany, September 1997.

Stacey, M K, Rzevski, G, Sharp, H C, Petre, M, and Buckland, R A, “Intelligent Support for Conceptual Design: A Flow Modelling Approach”. Proceedings of ICED 97, August 1997.

Rzevski, G, “Multi-Agent Systems in Engineering”, Keynote Paper. AIENG97 Conf, Capri, Italy, July 1997.

Rzevski, G, Buckland, R, “Value Chain Management in Space Industry”. Keynote Paper. BNSC Workshop, April 1997.

Rzevski, G, “A Framework for Designing Intelligent Manufacturing Systems”. Computers in Industry, 34 (1997) 211-219.

Adey, R. A., Rzevski, G. and Teti, R. (eds), “Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering XII”, Computational Mechanics Publications, 1997.

1996 | Papers

Rzevski, G, “Intelligent Machines and Systems: Trends”. Keynote Paper. Proceedings of the International Conf on Industrial Systems, Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, 1-3 October 1996.

Rzevski, G, “The Concept of Virtual Design Studio”. Keynote Paper. Proceedings of the East-West Conference on IT in Design Moscow, 1-3 July 1996.

Wiese, P R and Rzevski, G, “IT Support for Strategic Design”. Proceedings of the East-West Conference on IT in Design Moscow, 1-3 July 1996.

Lucas-Smith, A and Rzevski, G, “Information Technology Support for Distributed, Collaborative Design of Mechatronic Systems”. Proceedings of the East-West Conference on IT in Design Moscow, 1-3 July 1996.

Rzevski, G and Buckland, R, “New Thinking In R&D Management”. Proceedings of European Space R&D Workshop The Challenge of Change, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, 14-15 February 1996.

Stacey, M K, Petre, M, Rzevski, G, Sharp, H C, and Buckland, R A, “Beyond Engineering Bias: Designing a Tool to Liberate Conceptual Design”. In Blandford, A and Thimbleby, H (eds), Adjunct Proceedings of HCI 96, London, 1996.

Stacey, M K, Sharp, H C, Petre, M, Rzevski, G, and Buckland, R A, “A Representation Scheme to Support Conceptual Design of Mechatronic Systems”. In Gero, J S, Sudweeks, F, (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Design 96. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.

Adey, R. A., Rzevski, G. and Sunol, A. K. (eds), “Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering XI”, Computational Mechanics Publications, 1996.

1995 | Papers

Rzevski, G, “Global Information Systems and Organisational Change”.IFAC Conference, Berlin, September 1995.

Rzevski, G, “A Framework for the Design of Intelligent Manufacturing Systems”. ICIM95 Conf, Lisbon, Cascais, August 1995.

Rzevski, G, “Artificial Intelligence in Engineering: Past, Present and Future”. Keynote Paper. AIENG95 Conf, Udine, Italy, July 1995.

Rzevski, G, “Intelligent Systems: Issues and Trends”. Keynote Paper. International Conf on Intelligent Manufacturing, Wuhan, China, June 1995.

Rzevski, G, FACADE: “Concurrent Engineering Applied to Multi-Technology Products”. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Concurrent/Simultaneous Engineering Frameworks and Applications, Lisbon, April 1995.

Rzevski, G (ed), “Mechatronics: Designing Intelligent Machines”, Butterworth Heinemann, 1995.

Rzevski, G, Adey, R A, Tasso, C (eds), “Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering X”. Computational Mechanics Publications, 1995.

Consulting

Throughout his academic career Professor Rzevski has worked with industry and administrations as an advisor and consultant. He has recently founded a new company, Rzevski Solutions Ltd, specifically to support his consulting activities. Rzevski Solutions undertakes larger projects in collaboration with experts belonging to an international network of highly skilled and experienced researchers and consultants from the UK, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Russia and the USA.

Below are some of George’ past assignments.

:: | Software Engineering and Software Reliability

Professor Rzevski advised Hitachi in Tokyo on software engineering for advanced control systems; the assignment specified the aim of achieving error-free software for industrial controllers. Whilst in Tokyo he audited software engineering courses at Hitachi Institute of Technology.

His work abroad included an investigation of reasons for software failures in Danish Electricity Supply Authority and advice to German National Computing Centre, Bonn on software development methodologies.

He took a sabbatical year to help British Aerospace, Stevenage with developing fail-safe software for critical avionics applications and to advise ICL West Gorton on improving reliability of operating systems.

George advised National Computing Centre, Manchester on advantages of evolutionary software development methodologies.

:: | Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing

Professor Rzevski worked with ITT in Stuttgart, Antwerp, Paris and Harlow on the computer aided design of telephone exchanges and with GEC, Stafford on the computer aided design of turbine generators.

For many years George worked as a consultant to ICL in Putney, Kidsgrove and Reading on quality control systems and material requirements planning.

:: | Socio-Technical and Educational Projects

Later on in his career, Professor Rzevski undertook a wide variety of socio-technical assignments, which gave him a good understanding of how commercial world coped with rapid changes imposed by the emergence of global economy and new technologies.

This included a long-term assignment with Philips, Eindhoven advising on the introduction of advanced computer technology into Philips plants in Holland and Belgium. George provided training and advice for plant managers, supervised feasibility studies and audited plans for large capital projects.

Another of his large Dutch clients was a consortium of top banks, which was formed to finance and supervise the establishment of the first private IT University in The Hague. The idea was to offer postgraduate courses in IT for business, and George was commissioned to evaluate proposals for syllabuses, supporting technology and administrative aspects of the proposed University. The key problem was to match expectations of commerce with aspirations of Dutch academia.

For an extended period of time George worked with leading UK retailers on possible applications of Artificial Intelligence in retail and with engineering companies such as Alcatel, Romford; Lucas Industries, Birmingham; Unilever, Bedford; and Express Lifts, Northampton on wider aspects of managing engineering design and particularly on concurrent engineering.

Professor Rzevski has contributed to the UK Government Technology Foresight Programmes in Retail and Space Sectors and chaired an EU working group assessing trends in the ways information technology is used in industry and commerce. He conducted a study of competitiveness of the UK space technology companies for the Department of Trade and Industry.

He was a member of an international panel providing help to the Russian Government on issues related to distance education. As an EU expert Professor Rzevski led a Russian team of software designers that developed an advanced Internet-based system for distance education of air-traffic controllers in Russia. The system has been instrumental in preparing Russian air-traffic controllers distributed over vast distances throughout Siberia for communication with Western pilots.

George has given occasional Master Classes to top engineering managers and senior engineers from BA Systems on Virtual Design Studios, Virtual Manufacturing and Multi-Agent Applications in Design and Manufacturing.

Software Development

After retiring from a very successful academic career at the age of 65, Professor Rzevski, in partnership with Petr Skobelev and Mike Peters, raised venture capital from Eurovestech, London and in 1999 founded a multi-agent technology company named Magenta Corporation, www.magenta-technology.com. Magenta is based in London and its software development unit comprising now around 120 programmers is located in Samara, Russia.

At the time, George was one of the oldest entrepreneurs in the UK. He initially led Magenta as Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive and later continued as Chief Scientist.

Magenta multi-agent technology is based on Professor Rzevski’s original work further developed in close collaboration with Magenta co-founder, Dr Petr Skobelev, who manages technology development in Samara.

Key components of Magenta software are:

[1] Ontology, which contains conceptual domain knowledge organised as a semantic network
[2] Virtual Market, which represents the environment in which thousands of Agents cooperate or compete whilst attempting to solve a given problem
[3] A Multi-Agent Engine, which provides all supporting runtime code

Magenta products are multi-agent schedulers for ocean and road transportation logistics; knowledge discovery engines; engines for text understanding applications and domain-specific semantic search engines.

Magenta also develops applications in specialised fields, including some aspects of airplane wing design and car production scheduling.

A considerable part of Magenta revenue derives from application development work in accordance with client’s specification, which may or may not encompass proprietary agent technology.

To protect its intellectual property Magenta lodged several patent applications, including:

[1] G Rzevski, P Skobelev. Managing a Virtual Environment. - Patent Application No. 0202527.8, 2003.
[2] G Rzevski, I Minakov, P Skobelev. Data Mining. - Patent Application No. 0403145.6, 2004.
[3] G Rzevski, I Minakov, P Skobelev. Automated Text Analysis. - Patent Application No. 305634, 2004.

Projects

The experience of Professor Rzevski is illustrated by a small selection of projects in which his expertise played a key part.

:: | The Design of a Multi-Agent Aviation Systems

Researching the capabilities of large-scale multi-agent systems for co-ordinating a large number of autonomous aviation organisations operating on airports, including catering, passenger and luggage transfer, supply of fuel, maintenance of aircrafts, etc. Participants are an aircraft manufacturer, an airport authority and several universities.

:: | Multi-Agent Semantic Search for Health and Care Knowledge Access

Researching an agent-based search engine capable of effectively selecting relevant knowledge from a pool of unstructured and multi-formatted medical and care information available on the Internet in several natural languages.

:: | Social Passport

Designing, supplying, implementing and supporting a multi-agent system for social passports. Each citizen is given a smart card which, when inserted into readers located at local authority offices, enables the passport holders to obtain personalised information on their social benefits, income tax and other entitlements. The system is in full operation.

:: | Agent-Controlled Intelligent Geometry Compressor

Developing a simulation model of a compressor capable of self-organisation and adaptation to rapidly changing operational conditions. Participants included compressor manufacturers and universities.

:: | A Family of Space Robots

Developing a pilot system of five robots for space applications capable of co-operating on complex tasks and supporting each other in case of emergences. Participants included a blue chip space equipment manufacturer and several UK universities.

:: | Multi-Agent Scheduling of Ocean Vessels

Designing, supplying, implementing and supporting a powerful multi-agent scheduler capable of scheduling, in real time, the operation of a fleet of 50 very large oil tankers. Software was developed by Magenta for a tanker fleet management company.

:: | Multi-Agent Scheduling of Car Manufacturing

Designing and implementing a prototype real-time multi-agent scheduler for one of the largest car manufacturers in Europe. Software was developed by Magenta.

:: | Current Value Chains and New Opportunities in the UK Space Industry

DTI sponsored project which suggested how to take advantage of new opportunities created by the Internet based economy.

:: | The Design and Implementation of a Distance Learning Course in Intelligent Machines

The course was centred on a small Lego-based robot for which students designed various intelligent control strategies and conducted experiments, at their homes, with a view to evaluating design results.

Academic Links

Professor Rzevski has strong international links with many universities and research establishments around the globe.

Some of the current active collaborations are described below:

:: | Westminster, Samara and Cologne

At Cologne University of Applied Sciences in Germany George is Visiting Professor in Multi-Agent Technology. His main role there is to help International Institute for Management and Logistics to develop a centre of excellence in Adaptive Logistics and Multi-Agent Decision-Support Systems.

At Westminster Business School (WBS), London he is Visiting Scholar in Complexity and Multi-Agent Applications. His PhD students use Magenta Technology system development tools to investigate agent-driven websites and semantic search engines. WBS is co-operating with Cologne on Adaptive Logistics for airports.

He is a frequent visitor to Institute for Control of Complex Systems of Russian Academy of Sciences, Samara in Russia, where he gives regular seminars on Complexity and Agent-based Computing. The Institute is linked to Cologne Logistics research team.

Westminster, Samara and Cologne now form an international research triangle.

:: | GLORI (Global Logistics Research Initiative)

George is an active member of GLORI (Global Logistics Research Initiative), www.glori.com consisting of several universities around the Glob engaged in advanced logistics research, including Cranfield University, UK; Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Germany; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA; Chalmers Institute of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden; University of Mexico, Cuernavaca, and Delft Technological University, The Netherlands.

GLORI members meet several times a year in various working groups and conferences and undertake joint research.

:: | European network of excellence in Complexity

Professor Rzevski belongs to the European network of excellence in Complexity, ONCE-CS, www.once-cs.net, which is pioneering research and education in complex adaptive systems throughout the Union; He is also a member of the European and UK Complexity Societies.

:: | Sri Lanka

In 1998 George was engaged as a consultant by British Council to help the Open University of Sri Lanka to develop academic computing. As a result of his several visits to Sri Lanka and his donation of essential books, the University developed a research group in Artificial Intelligence under the leadership of Dr Asoka Karunananda. Since then the group has been very active, supervising a number of MPhil projects and launching the Sri Lanka Association of Artificial Intelligence. The research collaboration with Asoka flourished, resulting in him spending six months in the UK as a Commonwealth Scholar, where he worked with George on implications of philosophical aspects of Ontology for the design of multi-agent systems. Asoka is now professor at the leading technological university in Colombo and George is planning an extended visit to his laboratory.

:: | Open University

At the Open University George spent his most creative years in academic research. He still maintains strong links with his old Department where he participates in the research into intelligent geometry for turbo machinery. The idea is to build agents into movable parts of machines with a view to making them capable of self-organisation. An initial simulation shows that such machines may be capable of achieving adaptation and resilience similar to those exhibited by biological systems.