Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Dresden Germany

International seminar and workshop on

Extreme Events in Complex Dynamics

October 23 - November 03, 2006

Scientific coordinators:
Sergio Albeverio (Universität Bonn, Germany)
Volker Jentsch (Forschungszentrum BiBoS, Bonn Germany)
Holger Kantz(MPIPKS Dresden, Germany)
Stefano Ruffo (Università degli Studii di Firenze, Italy)

Organisation:
Mandy Lochar (MPIPKS Dresden, Germany)

Extreme events challenge human life and civilization in many ways, such as in the form of extreme precipitation events and floods, by earthquakes, by network failures (power supply, internet, traffic networks), by extreme socio-political events and by extreme economical events. Due to their high potential damage, extreme events receive considerable attention in many of the corresponding specific disciplines. More generally, one can say that the potential of a system to create extreme events, i.e., to generate large deviations from its average behaviour, is an intrinsic property of complex dynamics.
The study of extreme events has many facetts. On this workshop and seminar, the issues of potential universality, modelling, prediction and verification will be in the focus, whereas the more sociological issues of anticipation and management will be addressed only partly.
This meeting has the goal to establish the research on extreme events on a more abstract level as a field in complex systems research. It therefore tries to collect the current knowledge, to explore potentially relevant theoretical concepts and model classes, and to explore the forefronts of the different fields which can contribute to a comprehensive view of extreme events. The goal of such activities would ultimately be to identify sufficient and neccesary conditions for a system to create extreme events, to identify mechanisms leading to extremes in the near future with the goal of prediction, and of advancing theories such as extreme value statistics and the theory of large deviations into a state applicable to nonlinear, long range correlated processes.
Physical abstraction and the profound knowledge of, e.g., critical phenomena, nonlinear dynamics, statistical physics, turbulence, SOC and other areas will be one necessary input. Mathematical theories such as bifurcation theory, dynamical systems, stochastics, statistics, will be another. The phenomenology of extreme events in many applied fields will set the challenges in particular for modelling and prediction, but also for the general understanding.

The workshop (Oct.30 to Nov.2)
will present, by invited and contributed talks and by extensive discussions during poster sessions, the current state of research related to extreme events. It will be interdisciplinary covering many different scenarios. Experts in, e.g., meteorology, climatology, economy, geology will present and discuss their phenomenology of extreme events. Physicists and mathematicians will discuss recent theoretical results, numerical simulations and laboratory experiments relevant for the issue.

The seminar (Oct. 23 to Oct. 29)
is devoted to physical and mathematical theories and selected phenomena and will consist of tutorials in different topics. It hence addresses young researchers who wish to enter the field.

Invited Speakers Include::
L. Bogachev (Leeds), A. Bunde (Giessen), J. Casti (Vienna), P. Deheuvels (Paris)
S. Dobrokhotov (Moscow), R. S. Ellis (Massachusets), M. Ghil (Paris), P. Häanggi (Augsburg)
D. Helbing (Dresden), S. Hergarten (Graz), P. Holdsworth (Lyon), P. Imkeller (Berlin)
K. Lehnertz (Bonn), Lehning (Davos), R. Mahnke (Rostock), R. Mantegna (Palermo)
M. Marsili (Trieste), K. Nagel (Berlin), J. Peinke (Oldenburg), C. Pennetta (Lecce)
J. Portugali (Tel-Aviv), Z. Racz (Budapest), G. Schütz (Jülich), L.A. Schmith (Oxford)
I. Sokolov (Berlin), D. Sornette (Zürich), E. Stanley (Boston), D. Stauffer (Köln)
J. Steinebach (Köln), S. Tanase-Nicola (Amsterdam)

Applications are welcome and should be made by using the application form on the conference web page. Please note that the number of attendees is limited. The registration fee is 100 EURO, costs for accommodation and meals will be covered by the Max Planck Institute. In exceptional cases, limited funding is available to partly cover travel expenses.

Deadline for applications is July 31, 2006.

For further information please e-mail to: exev06@mpipks-dresden.mpg.de