The anticipation of an X-event is a bit like weather-forecasting. We take the drivers of atmospheric change, quantities like temperature, air pressure, humidity, wind velocities and the like, and use mathematical equations governing the change of these quantities to come up with a forecast like, “twenty percent chance of rain tomorrow.” Here we might think of a kind of landscape of weather events, consisting of sharp peaks, narrow valleys, flat plateaus and the like. At a given time, the current weather is located somewhere on this landscape. But the landscape is dynamically changing, so you may be on a flat plateau right now but on a mountain peak tomorrow. This means that tomorrow a small random trigger could send you tumbling into a new weather domain, while that same trigger today while you’re on the plateau would cause no major movement, at all.
The goal of this pilot project is to investigate this landscape picture not for weather events, but for human-caused extreme events, such as the breakup of the European Union, a terrorist movement like ISIS, a meltdown of the global financial system and other such major life-changing events.
