Professor Rui Perdigão’s course on Complex System Dynamics, headquartered at the Meteoceanics Institute for Complex System Science since its inception, has later been introduced by him as semester doctoral courses at the University of Lisbon (2019-) and at the Interuniversity Institute for Intelligence, Complexity and Security (2022-), also offering 6 ECTS (3 USC) for students enrolled in programs from partner universities.

The course is specially tailored to a wide-spectrum interdisciplinary audience spanning across natural, social, technical and exact sciences, and has already attracted bright students to Rui Perdigão’s interuniversity chair and institutes.

Along the way, the objectives and program have been coevolving with the latest scientific progress in this active interdisciplinary field. One of the current programs (Fall 2024 with ESS focus) is detailed below:

Objectives

  • Acquisition of fundamental competences in complexity sciences, their relevance and implementation in the conceptualization, systematization, modeling and formal analysis of the complex dynamics underlying a coevolutionary world;
  • Learning fundamental principles that allow to formulate and discern the dynamics of complex systems, including emergence of extreme phenomena, in an elegantly simple and effective way without loss of rigor nor generality;
  • Deepening scientific research, development and communication at the interface among frontier natural, social and technical sciences.

Program

  • Fundamental notions on the dynamics of complex systems, principles and underlying mechanisms in dynamic systems theory and physical information;
  • Methods of systematization of dynamic systems: simple conceptual structures representing complex natural, technical and social phenomena;
  • Fundamentals of the dynamics of multiscale multidomain systems, from microphysical to cosmological, from neuronal to geophysical, along with the emergence of regimes, critical transitions, extreme events and multi-hazards in the context of complexity sciences;
  • Coevolutionary models of Earth System Dynamics in a holistic perspective involving dynamics of the oceans, atmosphere, geosphere, biosphere and society;
  • Dynamic methods of extraction and analysis of information related to the dynamics of complex systems, from empirical and computational records;
  • Detection of patterns of spatial and temporal climatic variability from data of the dynamics of natural systems and attribution to underlying mechanisms;
  • Methods of evaluating uncertainty and predictability in complex system dynamics, for representative model optimization and decision support.

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