title: Saving Human Lives: What Complexity Science and Information Systems can Contribute.
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.
authors.affiliation: ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland ; Risk Center, ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 8092  Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Helbing
authors.affiliation: Robert Koch-Institute, 13353  Berlin, Germany ; Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt-University, 10115  Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brockmann
authors.affiliation: ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chadefaux
authors.affiliation: ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Karsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Donnay
authors.affiliation: Wearable Computing Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Ulf
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Blanke
authors.affiliation: ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Olivia
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Woolley-Meza
authors.affiliation: Center for Adaptive Rationality (ARC), Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Mehdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Moussaid
authors.affiliation: Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, London, W1T 4TJ UK ; Systems Centre, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1UB UK.
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Johansson
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, 12587 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Krause
authors.affiliation: Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schutte
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Matjaž
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Perc
keywords:  Complexity science; Crime; Crowd disasters; Disease spreading; Terrorism; War