Applications of CAS theory

Many applications of complex adaptive system theory have found their way into business, economics, and sundry other feilds of study. Some notable examples include:

• Scientists at Northwestern University did a study where they modeled the schools and school districts in chicago to explore the consequences of school choice
  
• The Bios Group was a company founded by Stuart Kauffman, a medical doctor and evolutionary biologist, with the aim of apply the lessons of complexity science to the business world. It provided consulting services to Fortune 500 companies for several years, before it was acquired by NuTech Solutions in 2003.
• The Swarm Development Group is a non-profit organization that developed the open-source Swarm platform for agent-based modelling. The Swarm platform gives software developers tools for quickly coding agent-based systems that can be used in a variety of complex adaptive system simulations. The Swarm Development Group also hosts an annual conference on agent-based modeling applications.
• Scientists at Ohio State University and Northwestern University last year used agent-based modeling to successfully simulate the general immune response to a viral infection with good success. The Basic Immune Simulator software behaved as researchers expected an actual immune system would, and they suggest that it can be used as an educational tool, and as a way to advance basic immune system research without endangering humans.
• The Rand Corporation has used a complex adaptive systems approach to address planning in military strategy, as detailed in this paper by Paul K. Davis.