Understanding and Prediction of Critical Transitions in Complex Systems

Our interest in using current and past indicators to predict future events is, of course, not new. Our desire for reliable prediction has motivated centuries of scholarly effort. As our ability to predict has improved, we have raised our expectations. Now we seek methods to allow prediction of critical transitions that occur in complex, nonlinear systems. Predicting critical transitions remains one of the major unsolved problems in the fundamental theory of complex systems. This multi-national collaboration will use dynamical systems theory together with approaches from the statistical physics of phase transitions to develop prediction algorithms.