Bioinspired Algorithms in Complex Ephemeral Environments

Abstract The concept of Ephemeral Computing is an emergent topic that is currently consolidating among the research community. It includes computing systems where the nodes or the connectivity have an ephemeral and thus unpredictable nature. Although the capacity and computer power of small and medium devices (as smartphones or tablets) are increasing swiftly, their computing capacities are usually underexploited. The availability of highly-volatile heterogeneous computer resources capable of running software agents requires suitable algorithms to make a proper use of the available resources while circumventing the potential problems that may produce such non-reliable systems. Due to the non-reliable nature of the system where the algorithms under consideration should run, they have to be ephemerality-aware, having the self-capability for understanding this kind of environments and adapt to them by means of exibility, plasticity and robustness. Because of their decentralized functioning, intrinsic parallelism, resilience, and adaptiveness, bioinspired algorithms suit well to this endeavour. The papers in this special issue address a variety of issues and concerns in ephemeral and complex domains, including: signal reconstruction, large scale social network analysis, diseases detection and prevention, unit deployment and collaborative hyper-heuristics.