Innovations and Applications Events

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OVERVIEW

This meeting is open to all with a professional interest in critical transitions, stability and resilience in complex systems. This event will showcase the results of a four-year research program undertaken in eight European universities and led by Imperial College, London. 

The problem of characterising and predicting the occurrence of sudden changes of behaviour in the dynamics of complex systems has been at the forefront of scientific agenda of many national research councils and the EU for more than a decade.

There is empirical evidence for the existence of early-warning signals for sudden changes in many complex systems. In medicine we have spontaneous systemic failures such as asthma attacks or epileptic seizures; in global finance, there is concern about systemic market crashes; in the Earth system, abrupt shifts in ocean circulation or climate such as the end of the glacial period; in ecology examples are catastrophic shifts in rangelands or the onset of severe droughts, collapse of fish or wildlife populations, collapse of coral ecosystems and outbreaks of disease in crops; in engineering systems we have structural and functional failures; in society and economy we have sudden shifts in trends and behaviour. The list is not exhaustive as there are many more examples of sudden onsets of major shifts in complex systems.

The scope of the CRITICS research programme is to establish the theoretical foundation, develop models, techniques, early-warning signals and computational tools to predict sudden changes of behaviour in a wide variety of contexts, including biology, climate, environment, finance, geophysics, economy and engineering systems.

We want to find wider applications for our research and to connect with potential partners who could benefit from this knowledge. The presentations will be shaped for a scientific but not necessarily mathematical audience, to encourage communication and bridge the gap between theoretical research and concrete applications. The event will alternate presentations from CRITICS researchers, final year PhD students, industry speakers and networking sessions.

This is an opportunity to learn about the state-of-the art research and applications in this vast field and to connect with a wide group of PhD students in their final year, senior academics and scientists working in industry and other research institutions.