Saving Human Lives: What Complexity Science and Information Systems can Contribute

TLDR

Common approaches fail to capture system behavior because they ignore feedback loops, instabilities, and cascade effects, whereas complexity science better explains the counter‑intuitive macro‑level dynamics of social systems. The study aims to show that conventional deterrence strategies are insufficient for crowd disasters, crime, terrorism, war, and disease spread, and that appropriate system design and management can halt undesirable cascades and foster beneficial self‑organization. The authors analyze models and data on crowd disasters, crime, terrorism, war, and disease spread to illustrate the inadequacy of conventional deterrence strategies. Complexity science can help save human lives by enabling better system design to prevent cascade effects.

Abstract

We discuss models and data of crowd disasters, crime, terrorism, war and disease spreading to show that conventional recipes, such as deterrence strategies, are often not effective and sufficient to contain them. Many common approaches do not provide a good picture of the actual system behavior, because they neglect feedback loops, instabilities and cascade effects. The complex and often counter-intuitive behavior of social systems and their macro-level collective dynamics can be better understood by means of complexity science. We highlight that a suitable system design and management can help to stop undesirable cascade effects and to enable favorable kinds of self-organization in the system. In such a way, complexity science can help to save human lives.