Recreational Boats as a Self-Organizing System

The term ``self organization'' has gained much popularity over the past few years; it has gained use in the popular press as well as in the scientific literature. Despite the volume of literature and discussion over the concept, there does not seem to be solid agreement on exactly what the term means. A good discussion of the term is presented in Pahl-Wostl (1995). Essentially a self-organizing system is one that lacks centralized control, where order is endogenously generated from its constituent members rather than exogenously imposed. As opposed to a machine or a computer, which has rigidly defined interactions of components and is considered faulty when the interactions are not predictable, a self-organizing system is inherently unpredictable and dynamic. Pahl-Wostl uses the metaphor of an army being a rigid hierarchical structure, and a liberal democracy being a self-organizing system. Armies are very efficient for performing specific tasks, but can experience considerable difficulty in the face of change due to a rigid command structure. Democracies have the ability to adapt very quickly in the face of change, at the cost of often low efficiency for the completion of specific tasks. A true democracy has decentralized command- command structures exist, but are internally generated and subject to change according to the internal dynamics of the society. They are also highly variable, and chaotic behavior and lack of stability is just as likely as stable or cyclic behavior.

One central feature of self-organizing systems is that uncertainty is an integral part of the system. Uncertainty has been viewed as an enemy by researchers trying to plan for management of complex systems. Hollick (1993) suggested that since such uncertainty is inherent in ecosystems they must be viewed as part of a larger sociobiophysical system, and advocated a cultivation of practices that would allow for ``self-management'' in such systems.

In the boater interviews for Sarasota Bay, interviewees never cited exogenous factors as primary motivations for where or when to take their boats. Trip agendas were decided entirely by the boaters themselves, and exogenously imposed limitations to their agendas (weather conditions, blocked canals, or excessive traffic) were at best grudgingly accepted. Other factors cannot be justified specifically by the interview data, but are nevertheless considered reasonable assumptions based on conversations with boaters: many pleasure boaters indicated resistance to the idea of imposition of authority from an external source were such an imposition possible, but would readily conform to internally imposed (hypothetical) rules if s/he recognized benefits in doing so. Complex traffic patterns and chaotic behavior at unpredictable intervals mentioned by some subjects during the interviews are consistent with the decentralized, dynamic model of a self-organized society.

 Given the data sets available and the justifications for modeling boat traffic as a decentralized system, the decision was made to model recreational boat traffic at the lowest possible level (the boater), and infer macroscopic patterns as they emerge from the interactions of the boats' actions.