George Rzevski

George Rzevski (Prof. Emeritus) is an academic, entrepreneur and consultant based in London UK.
He is Professor Emeritus, Complexity Science in the Design Research Group at the Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. He has carried out industry-based research in many IT-related areas and is particularly noted for his achievements in the practical application of complexity science. He is widely known as the ‘Father of Autonomous Intelligent Agents’, through his work with Professor Petr Skobelev of the University of Samara, Russia. They continue to produce successful solutions to many otherwise intractable commercial problems, using IT multi-agent technology.

Early life and education

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, gaining Dipl.Ing. with distinction.

Career

In his late twenties he was given the opportunity to establish a new design

office in Belgrade. He hand-picked his staff, employing only talented young engineers; under his leadership he developed a major organisation capable of undertaking large-scale engineering projects. At the age of 29 George was Chief Designer of all significant railway electrification schemes in Yugoslavia.

He moved to the UK in the 1960s where he carried out research at Imperial College before transferring to Kingston Polytechnic (now University). At Kingston he became Professor and initiated new innovative undergraduate and Masters courses on Information Systems Design, establishing it as a discipline dependent on but distinctly different from Computer Science. The course has widely influenced a number of British companies through its attendees.

From 1989-1999 George held the post of Professor in the Department of Design and Innovation at the Open University, where he was Director of the Centre for the Design of Intelligent Systems. His Centre in Milton Keynes was well funded by grants from government and industry and his department was rated 5 out of 5 in the two UK Research Assessment exercises. As a tribute to his successful research career, the University established the George Rzevski Complexity Laboratory.

George has served as Visiting Research Fellow and/or Professor at the London School of Economics, Brunel; Wuhan University, China, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Germany. Moratuwa University, Colombo, Sri Lanka and Aerospace University, Samara, Russia. In Samara and Colombo, he has initiated and developed over the years a unique community of several hundreds of scientists and software engineers who work in the area of complex adaptive systems and multi-agent technology.

George and Petr Skobelev are joint founders of a network of advanced technology companies, which include Magenta Corporation, London UK and Samara Russia, Rzevski Solutions Ltd. London, Knowledge Genesis Ltd. London and Hanover, Smart Solutions Ltd. Samara and Multi-Agent Technology Ltd. London. Jointly with Petr, George has three UK and International patents on multi-agent systems, for logistics, dynamic data-mining and semantic processing.

Contributions / Achievements

Through many years of industrial research George Rzevski identified areas where traditional engineering techniques had coped adequately with relatively static situations, but were no longer effective in a world of increasing complexity and rapid change. Indeed, their continued application was shown to be at best ineffective but often commercially harmful.

Top-down control of hierarchical Systems, in situations where numerous components and their inter-relationships were constantly in flux, was in George's philosophy to be replaced by bottom-up interaction of the system's components. The resulting reliance on emergent behaviour, rather than on deterministic control was for many years considered by sceptics to be contrary to engineering principles. However, over the last decade or so, successful applications have proved the point, in many cases providing solutions to problems where alternatives did not and still do not exist.

George's greatest achievement is, perhaps, the development of underlying theory and the design of a complex adaptive logistic system for delivery of astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. The system replaced a team of several hundred highly qualified engineers, improved performance and rapidly restored supply of cargo to the Space Station after recent catastrophic rocket explosions interrupted the lifeline to Space Station crew. The system is a unique network of cooperating real-time schedulers working as a critical mission link.

Other applications include adaptive scheduling of:

• Seagoing tankers, used by around 10% of tanker capacity.
• Taxis involving a fleet of over 2,000 and 13,000 orders daily.
• Road transport.
• Supply networks, as in extensive, complex supply-chains.
• A fleet of satellites, involving swarms of lightweight specialised satellites, replacing earlier large, expensive, multi-purpose models.
• Manufacturing, in situations of frequent, unpredictable disruptive events.
• Also:
• Adaptive semantic processing for text analysis and evolution towards the Semantic Web.
• Adaptive detection of clashes caused by design changes, as in mechanical systems with many interlocking parts, as in aviation, chemical plants and robotics.
• Adaptive data mining, using clustering techniques for pattern identification.
• Adaptive management of service teams, to direct a large number of technicians attending critical situations subject to rapid change.
• Adaptive project management to increase project member productivity.

• Rzevski, George (2015). Managing Complexity. London: WIT Press. p. 356. ISBN 978-1-84564-936-4.