A conceptual framework for collective adaptive systems

In this paper we propose a conceptual framework to characterize Collective Adaptive Systems. By following the separation of concerns we represent these systems as a composition of three components: execution, context and adaptation, and we give a formal definition of all their concepts, defining their corresponding semantics and pointing out the interactions among them. Moreover, we formalize also the main properties that these systems should have, abstracting from any precise specification language or model.