ABSTRACT
An emergent phenomenon is the large-scale group behavior of a system that does not seem to have any explanation in terms of the single constituent parts only. In other words, emergence can be defined by saying that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” In emergent systems, we can consider two different levels of description: the microscopic level, where all the single components are taken into account; and the macroscopic level, where emergent behavior occurs as the synthesis of the complex interaction of the microscopic components. To bring emergent systems out of a speculative horizon it is necessary to experiment and test them. In particular, emergent system simulation on parallel computers is an essential practice for an indepth analysis and evaluation of the accuracy of the proposed models of emergent behavior.
