The Science of Disasters. Climate Disruptions, Heart Attacks, and Market Crashes
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Author(s): A. Bunde, J. Kropp and H. J. Schellnhuber (Eds)
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3540413243
Format: hardback
453pp
Price: £42.00, $69.95, €59.95
Review Date: 29 October 2002
Review: There is a growing awareness that even mild and regular nonlinearities may cause disruptive systems responses. There is certainly a ‘sensitive dependence’ of catastrophic dynamics on structural details of the underlying causal web. This book consists of four parts: The first part introduces important notions and analysis methods, i.e. the multifractal formalism that is especially relevant when analysing non-linear complex systems. The second part describes the climate system, its predictability and the possible occurrence of disasters. It looks at climate modelling disaster scenarios that might affect the whole Earth. The third part of the book focuses on biodynamics. Heartbeat records are analysed, the detection of biological disasters such as skin cancer and other tumours is described, and computer simulations are used to study the occurrence of panic in crowds. The last part of the book takes an in-depth look at the stock market, including crashes.