Finding the direction of lowest resilience in multivariate complex systems

Weinans, Els; Lever, J Jelle; Bathiany, Sebastian; Quax, Rick; Bascompte, Jordi; van Nes, Egbert H; Scheffer, Marten; van de Leemput, Ingrid A

doi:10.1098/rsif.2019.0629

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Weinans, E., Lever, J. J., Bathiany, S., Quax, R., Bascompte, J., van Nes, E. H., Scheffer, M., & van de Leemput, I. A. (2019). Finding the direction of lowest resilience in multivariate complex systems. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 16(159), 20190629. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2019.0629

Abstract

The dynamics of complex systems, such as ecosystems, financial markets and the human brain, emerge from the interactions of numerous components. We often lack the knowledge to build reliable models for the behaviour of such network systems. This makes it difficult to predict potential instabilities. We show that one could use the natural fluctuations in multivariate time series to reveal network regions with particularly slow dynamics. The multidimensional slowness points to the direction of minimal resilience, in the sense that simul