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Nicole Rust /
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2023-10-28 20:23:47

Nicole Rust on Nostr: Fragility of complex systems - leads? I'm curious to widen my net wrt the different ...

Fragility of complex systems - leads?

I'm curious to widen my net wrt the different ways that complex systems can be fragile (versus robust). Any leads on good things to read?

To plant some seeds of different slices through it:

Adaptive systems (like ecosystems) tend to incorporate feedback. Fragility happens when a small change (eg in one node) leads to a catastrophe. These networks become more fragile as they increase in size:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58440-6

It's really hard to engineered a complex system that is robust to catastrophic failures. For example, the NE US powergrid 2003 NE US blackout happened when I single power line fell into a tree.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003)

Discussion of fragility is peppered all over. eg, here is an example of of it managing healthcare systems:
https://journals.lww.com/jonajournal/citation/2014/12000/handle_with_care__the_fragile_nature_of_complex.5.aspx

As these examples reflect, I'm really curious to learn about anything!
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