Related papers: Antifragility as a complex system's response to pe…

Physical systems experience nonlinear disturbances which have the potential to disrupt desired behavior. For a particular disturbance, whether or not the system recovers from the disturbance to a desired stable equilibrium point depends on…

We discuss models and data of crowd disasters, crime, terrorism, war and disease spreading to show that conventional recipes, such as deterrence strategies, are often not effective and sufficient to contain them. Many common approaches do…

This paper discusses desirable properties of forecasting models in production systems. It then develops a family of models which are designed to satisfy these properties: highly customizable to capture complex patterns; accommodates a large…

We study the disequilibrium dynamics of a stylised model of production networks in which firms use perishable and non-substitutable intermediate inputs, so that adverse idiosyncratic productivity shocks can trigger downstream shortages and…

Robustness of linear systems with constant coefficients is considered. There exist methods and tools for analyzing the stability of systems with random or deterministic uncertainties. At the same time, there are no approaches for the…

In this paper, we present a novel framework for quantifying a lower bound on resilience in continuous-time (non)linear systems subject to external disturbances while ensuring satisfaction of signal temporal logic specifications. Unlike…

Adaptive dynamical systems arise in a multitude of contexts, e.g., optimization, control, communications, signal processing, and machine learning. A precise characterization of their fundamental limitations is therefore of paramount…

Unstoppable feedback loops and tipping points in socio-ecological systems are the main threats to sustainability. These behaviors have been extensively studied, notably to predict, and arguably deviate, dead-end trajectories. Behind the…

The complexity of a system description is a function of the entropy of its symbolic description. Prior to computing the entropy of the system description, an observation scale has to be assumed. In natural language texts, typical scales are…

Persistence is an important characteristic of many complex systems in nature, related to how long the system remains at a certain state before changing to a different one. The study of complex systems' persistence involves different…

Many physical, chemical and biological systems exhibit a cooperative or sigmoidal response with respect to the input. In biochemistry, such behavior is called an allosteric effect. Here we demonstrate that a system with such properties can…

Urban crises - floods, pandemics, economic shocks, and conflicts - function as accelerators of urban change, exposing structural vulnerabilities while creating windows for reinvention. Building on a prior theoretical contribution that…

Contraction theory is a mathematical framework for studying the convergence, robustness, and modularity properties of dynamical systems and algorithms. In this opinion paper, we provide five main opinions on the virtues of contraction…

Understanding the relationship between complexity and stability in large dynamical systems -- such as ecosystems -- remains a key open question in complexity theory which has inspired a rich body of work developed over more than fifty…

Fault tolerance is increasingly important for unmanned autonomous vehicles. For example, in a multi robot system the agents need the ability to effectively detect and tolerate internal failures in order to continue performing their tasks…

We propose a mathematical framework for designing robust networks of coupled phase-oscillators by leveraging a vulnerability measure proposed by Tyloo et. al that quantifies how much a small perturbation to a phase-oscillator's natural…

We introduce the term Super-Reactive Systems to refer to reactive systems whose construction and behavior are complex, constantly changing and evolving, and heavily interwoven with other systems and the physical world. Finding hidden faults…

In theoretical studies, the most commonly used measure of ecological stability is resilience: ecosystems asymptotic rate of return to equilibrium after a pulse-perturbation $-$or shock. A complementary notion of growing popularity is…

Biological systems possess negative entropy. In them, one form of order produces another, more organized form of order. We propose a formal scheme to calculate robustness of an entire biological system by quantifying the negative entropy…

Emergence and causality are two fundamental concepts for understanding complex systems. They are interconnected. On one hand, emergence refers to the phenomenon where macroscopic properties cannot be solely attributed to the cause of…