Extreme events and trends: how complexity increases sudden changes and what this got to do with emerging trends?
The modern world is in a major period of transition from the post World War II era and its attendant institutions and global rules of order to a new world whose dimensions and rules are still being put in place. The great uncertainty about the endpoint of this transition has led to huge volatilities and rapid changes in every aspect of modern life, ranging from finance to social order to geopolitical alignments. An integral part of this world-changing process is the increased occurrence of extreme events (“X-events”) in all these domains. Our intellectual toolkit is poorly equipped to understand such “tail events”, a failing calling for new types of organizations and research institutions. The goals of these as-yet-nonexistent research centers must be twofold: to develop concepts and tools for understanding and anticipating X-event and to communicate to a broad public how such events arise and what can be done to manage their consequences.
Research partners: Prof. John Casti, Leena Ilmola (X-Center, Vienna)
Industrial partners: Munich Re (Munich, Germany)