A Roadmap for Causality Research in Complex Adaptive Systems

Causal modeling and cause-detection (abduction) are critical challenges for understanding and managing complex adaptive systems (CAS), including self-improving and self-integrating systems (SISSY). While the vast research literature on causality addresses many important issues, it mostly lacks specific methods for dealing with CAS-related issues - e.g. runtime changes and uncertainty; integrating new types of variables on-the-fly; nonlinear phenomena and large system scales. This paper aims to identify some of these key challenges and to highlight relevant research fields that might help to address them.