Complexity and Systemic Risk: Hilary Term Seminar Series 2010

Oxford University•www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk

Many of the systemic risks that we will need to address in the 21st century depend crucially on the often unanticipated consequences of interactions within and between different types of systems. The emerging, interdisciplinary field of complex systems provides a shared language as well as mathematical and computational models that can help us understand the challenges we face in this increasingly interconnected world. In this seminar series, leading researchers will explore the implications of a complex systems approach for systemic risks in ecosystems, financial systems, urban systems, and human societies.

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Episodes

Cooperation, Norms and Conflict: Towards Simulating the Foundations of Society

In order to understand social systems, it is essential to identify the circumstances under which individuals spontaneously start cooperating or developing shared behaviors, norms, and culture. In this connection, it is important to study the role of social mechanisms such as repeated interactions, group selection, network formation, costly punishment and group pressure, and how they allow us to transform social dilemmas into interactive situations that promote the social system. Furthermore, it ...

Mar 05, 2010•1 hr

Predicting the Behaviour of Techno-Social Systems: How Informatics and Computing Help to Fight Off Global Pandemics

We live in an increasingly interconnected world of 'techno-social' systems, where infrastructures composed of different technological layers are interoperating within the social component that drives their use and development. The multi-scale nature and complexity of these networks are crucial features in understanding and managing them. In the last decade advances in performance in computer technology, data acquisition and complex networks theory allow the generation of sophisticated simulation...

Feb 25, 2010•1 hr 12 min

Ocean Circulation and Climate: Observing and Modelling the Global Ocean

The oceans are a critical component of the climate system, storing roughly 1000 times as much heat, and 50 times as much carbon, as the atmosphere. In this talk, Professor David Marshall (21st Century Ocean Institute, University of Oxford) will discuss the challenges of predicting the evolution of a complex system that is grossly under-sampled and spans a bewildering range of scales in both space and time. These challenges will be illustrated through the important but over-sensationalised proble...

Feb 18, 2010•1 hr 1 min

Anticipating Future Complexity: Are Systems Such as Cities Getting More Complex?

Cities are getting more complex as their residents acquire more and more ways in which they can interact with one another. New technologies enable individuals to repackage their time and space in countless different combinations, and the flexibility afforded by such innovations makes possible many new ways in which individuals might react to this complexity. Behavioural change is considerably greater in the modern city than the medieval. Delivered by Professor Mike Batty: Director, Centre for Ad...

Feb 17, 2010•1 hr 5 min

Growth, Innovation, and the Pace of Life from Cells and Ecosystems to Cities and Corporations; Are They Sustainable?

Growth, Innovation, and the Pace of Life from Cells and Ecosystems to Cities and Corporations; Are They Sustainable? Are cities and companies "just" very large organisms? They grow, metabolise, evolve and adapt; however, almost all cities survive, whereas all companies die. A quantitative, predictive, unifying framework for addressing such questions and understanding the generic structure, dynamics and life history of social and biological systems will be developed. It is based on general proper...

Feb 05, 2010•1 hr 53 min

Stability and Complexity in Model Banking Systems

The recent banking crises have made it clear that increasingly complex strategies for managing risk in individual banks and investment funds (pension funds, etc) has not been matched by corresponding attention to overall systemic risks. Simple mathematical caricatures of 'banking ecosystems', which capture some of the essential dynamics and which have some parallels (along with significant differences) with earlier work on stability and complexity in ecological food webs, have interesting implic...

Jan 22, 2010•1 hr 2 min

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