Open Access Kent State (OAKS)

Recently, the continuity equation (also known as the advection equation) has been used to study stability properties of dynamical systems, where a linear transfer operator approach was used to examine the stability of a nonlinear equation both in continuous and discrete time (Vaidya and Mehta, IEEE Trans Autom Control 2008, 53, 307–323; Rajaram et al., J Math Anal Appl 2010, 368, 144–156). Our study, which conducts a series of simulations on residential patterns, demonstrates that this usage of the continuity equation can advance Haken's synergetic approach to modeling certain types of complex, self‐organizing social systems macroscopically. The key to this advancement comes from employing a case‐based approach that (1) treats complex systems as a set of cases and (2) treats cases as dynamical vsystems which, at the microscopic level, can be conceptualized as k dimensional row vectors; and, at the macroscopic level, as vectors with magnitude and direction, which can be modeled as population densities. Our case‐based employment of the continuity equation has four benefits for agent‐based and case‐based modeling and, more broadly, the social scientific study of complex systems where transport or spatial mobility issues are of interest: it (1) links microscopic (agent‐based) and macroscopic (structural) modeling; (2) transforms the dynamics of highly nonlinear vector fields into the linear motion of densities; (3) allows predictions to be made about future states of a complex system; and (4) mathematically formalizes the structural dynamics of these types of complex social systems.