Supply chain disruptions, cybercrime, polarization, pandemics: the most pressing challenges of our time are complex — and so are their solutions. For ten years, we have been working to understand both.
Ten years ago, the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) was founded on a simple but far-reaching premise: many of the defining challenges of our time cannot be understood by looking at their individual parts in isolation. Put differently, to solve big problems, we need to understand how things connect.
A VERY SPECIAL EVENING
Yesterday, we celebrated our 10th anniversary with around 200 guests. Click here to view the photo gallery.
“Whether financial markets, migration, health systems, cities, supply chains, or societal polarization — they all consist of a large number of interconnected actors who continuously influence each other and collectively produce dynamics that no single element ever planned, and that often unfold in entirely unexpected ways,” says Stefan Thurner, CSH’s co-founder and today’s president. In short: they are complex. “Have we solved complexity today? No. Have we understood it better? Yes — and in ways that would have been hard to imagine ten years ago.”
80 RESEARCHER. 13 TOPICS. 11 MEMBERS.
What began in 2016 with just three scientists has grown into an international center for the study of complex systems — with 80 researchers from nearly 30 nations, 13 research topics, and a mission that has never changed: Turning data into knowledge. Shaping knowledge into a form that can improve decision-making. And bringing it where it is needed.
This is made possible by a unique network of over 100 international researchers affiliated with the CSH, 11 member institutions in Austria, and over 70 partner organizations at home and abroad. This has also led to a growing number of practical transfers: for example, the Supply Chain Intelligence Institute Austria (ASCII), the blockchain forensics startup Iknaio, and collaborations with Interpol and the Bavarian Public Prosecutor’s Office.
COMPLEXITY SCIENCE — WHAT IS IT, EXACTLY?
Complexity science starts with a straightforward observation: an earthquake in one country may have absolutely no economic impact on the Austrian economy. Or it may have a very large one. A single person’s post on social media may have no societal effect whatsoever. Or it may go viral and, for example, lead to changes in legislation. An additional traffic light on a street may make hardly any difference. Or it may trigger gridlock. We cannot predict how secure our food supply is by looking at individual supply chains. We cannot understand why societies polarize by measuring individual opinions.
We cannot improve a city’s infrastructure without understanding how its streets, transportation systems, and people’s habits interact. “The world is more than the sum of its parts — it is the sum of its parts plus everything that happens between them” says Thurner.
From analyzing global supply chains to mapping disease trajectories, from examining cryptocurrency networks to modeling societal collapse: CSH’s thirteen research topics may seem heterogeneous at first glance. What connects them is a way of thinking in networks — a shared methodological language of network analysis, agent-based modeling, data science, and applied mathematics. And a positive impact on society as the goal.
Ten Years, One Book
With “It’s the Complexity, Stupid” we take stock of a decade — borrowing from James Carville, who in 1992 summed up Bill Clinton’s campaign with a single line: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
“Complexity is the very condition for understanding the world we live in today,” as Stefan Thurner puts it. “And this book offers an insight into what ten years of consistently pursuing that question have produced.”
SCIENCE THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
“We do science to solve real-world problems – not academic puzzles,” Thurner says.
A method for reconstructing money flows between cryptocurrency addresses, for instance, helped Bavarian law enforcement trace roughly 370,000 criminal sites on the dark web back to a single alleged perpetrator and shut them down – one of the largest operations ever carried out in that hidden, encrypted corner of the internet.
Another team is working on, essentially, quantifying history. They were able to identify conditions that lead to instability in societies throughout human history – among them elite overproduction: a condition where a society generates more individuals aspiring to elite positions (typically possessing high education, skills, or resources) than there are slots to absorb them in the power structure.
In addition, researchers succeeded in creating a one-to-one model of an entire economy – not at the industry level, but at the company level, which provides an somewhat atomic-level insight into economic structures and their interactions. A similar feat was achieved with millions of medical records, where disease trajectories were identified over an entire lifetime.
“And we are well on our way to understanding human societies just as well as we understand the human body,” explains Thurner. “Just as medicine could only truly heal once it understood how organs interact, we can only understand social dynamics once we know their interactions – ideally all of them. Now, for the first time, we have the data and methods to do so.”
A NEW ERA
“Complexity science looks different today than it did ten years ago,” says Thurner. “Hypotheses can be tested, and models can be validated using real-world systems. The next step is no longer just about understanding—but about targeted intervention. It’s about modifying complex systems so that they evolve in the desired direction.” The biggest challenge often lies not in a lack of data, computing power, or knowledge, but in understanding the connections that link everything together. “At the Complexity Science Hub, we want to establish a tradition and train a generation that can proactively help shape these challenges.”
In the ten years since its founding, the CSH has made the world a little more measurable. In the best tradition of science, this is a beginning. “Now we look to the future with great anticipation,” says Thurner.
