Modeling Systemic Behavior by State-Based Holonic Modular Units

The paper explores a vision in modeling the behavior of complex systems by modular units hosting state machines arranged in part-whole hierarchies and communicating through event flows. Each modular unit plays at the same time the double role of part and whole, i.e. it is inspired by the philosophical idea of holon, providing both an interface and an implementation by which other component state machines may be controlled in order to achieve a global behavior. It is moreover observed that it is possible to assign a formal characterization to such state modules, due to their part-whole arrangement, since higher-level behaviors can derive formally their meaning from lower-level component behaviors. Such a way of arranging behavioral modules allows to establish directly correct-by-construction safety and liveness properties of state-based systems thus challenging the current approach by which state machines interact at the same level and have to be model-checked for ensuring correctness.