The book you hold in your hands is the outcome of the "2014 Interdisciplinary Symposium on Complex Systems" held in the historical city of Florence. The book consists of 37 chapters from 4 areas of Physical Modeling of Complex Systems, Evolutionary Computations, Complex Biological Systems and Complex Networks. All 4 parts contain contributions that give interesting point of view on complexity in different areas in science and technology. The book starts with a comprehensive overview and classification of complexity problems entitled Physics in the world of ideas: Complexity as Energy" , followed by chapters about complexity measures and physical principles, its observation, modeling and its applications, to solving various problems including real-life applications. Further chapters contain recent research about evolution, randomness and complexity, as well as complexity in biological systems and complex networks. All selected papers represent innovative ideas, philosophical overviews and state-of-the-art discussions on aspects of complexity. The book will be useful as an instructional material for senior undergraduate and entry-level graduate students in computer science, physics, applied mathematics and engineering-type work in the area of complexity. The book will also be valuable as a resource of knowledge for practitioners who want to apply complexity to solve real-life problems in their own challenging applications.

This book is based on the outcome of the "2012 Interdisciplinary Symposium on Complex Systems" held at the island of Kos. The book consists of 12 selected papers of the symposium starting with a comprehensive overview and classification of complexity problems, continuing by chapters about complexity, its observation, modeling and its applications to solving various problems including real-life applications. More exactly, readers will have an encounter with the structural complexity of vortex flows, the use of chaotic dynamics within evolutionary algorithms, complexity in synthetic biology, types of complexity hidden inside evolutionary dynamics and possible controlling methods, complexity of rugged landscapes, and more. All selected papers represent innovative ideas, philosophical overviews and state-of-the-art discussions on aspects of complexity. The book will be useful as instructional material for senior undergraduate and entry-level graduate students in computer science, physics, applied mathematics and engineering-type work in the area of complexity. The book will also be valuable as a resource of knowledge for practitioners who want to apply complexity to solve real-life problems in their own challenging applications. The authors and editors hope that readers will be inspired to do their own experiments and simulations, based on information reported in this book, thereby moving beyond the scope of the book.

The book you hold in your hands is the outcome of the "ISCS 2013: Interdisciplinary Symposium on Complex Systems" held at the historical capital of Bohemia as a continuation of our series of symposia in the science of complex systems. Prague, one of the most beautiful European cities, has its own beautiful genius loci. Here, a great number of important discoveries were made and many important scientists spent fruitful and creative years to leave unforgettable traces. The perhaps most significant period was the time of Rudolf II who was a great supporter of the art and the science and attracted a great number of prominent minds to Prague. This trend would continue. Tycho Brahe, Niels Henrik Abel, Johannes Kepler, Bernard Bolzano, August Cauchy Christian Doppler, Ernst Mach, Albert Einstein and many others followed developing fundamental mathematical and physical theories or expanding them. Thus in the beginning of the 17th century, Kepler formulated here the first two of his three laws of planetary motion on the basis of Tycho Brahe's observations. In the 19th century, nowhere differentiable continuous functions (of a fractal character) were constructed here by Bolzano along with a treatise on infinite sets, titled "Paradoxes of Infinity" (1851). Weierstrass would later publish a similar function in 1872. In 1842, Doppler as a professor of mathematics at the Technical University of Prague here first lectured about a physical effect to bear his name later. And the epoch-making physicist Albert Einstein - while being a chaired professor of theoretical physics at the German University of Prague - arrived at the decisive steps of his later finished theory of general relativity during the years 1911-1912. In Prague, also many famous philosophers and writers accomplished their works; for instance, playwright arel ape coined the word "robot" in Prague ("robot" comes from the Czech word "robota" which means "forced labor").

Written in the 1980s by one of the fathers of chaos theory, Otto E. Roessler, the manuscript presented in this volume eventually never got published. Almost 40 years later, it remains astonishingly at the forefront of knowledge about chaos theory and many of the examples discussed have never been published elsewhere. The manuscript has now been edited by Christophe Letellier - involved in chaos theory for almost three decades himself, as well as being active in the history of sciences - with a minimum of changes to the original text. Finally released for the benefit of specialists and non-specialists alike, this book is equally interesting from the historical and the scientific points of view: an unconventionally modern approach to chaos theory, it can be read as a classic introduction and short monograph as well as a collection of original insights into advanced topics from this field.

Written in the 1980s by one of the fathers of chaos theory, Otto E. Roessler, the manuscript presented in this volume eventually never got published. Almost 40 years later, it remains astonishingly at the forefront of knowledge about chaos theory and many of the examples discussed have never been published elsewhere. The manuscript has now been edited by Christophe Letellier - involved in chaos theory for almost three decades himself, as well as being active in the history of sciences - with a minimum of changes to the original text. Finally released for the benefit of specialists and non-specialists alike, this book is equally interesting from the historical and the scientific points of view: an unconventionally modern approach to chaos theory, it can be read as a classic introduction and short monograph as well as a collection of original insights into advanced topics from this field.

This book is based on the outcome of the "2012 Interdisciplinary Symposium on Complex Systems" held at the island of Kos. The book consists of 12 selected papers of the symposium starting with a comprehensive overview and classification of complexity problems, continuing by chapters about complexity, its observation, modeling and its applications to solving various problems including real-life applications. More exactly, readers will have an encounter with the structural complexity of vortex flows, the use of chaotic dynamics within evolutionary algorithms, complexity in synthetic biology, types of complexity hidden inside evolutionary dynamics and possible controlling methods, complexity of rugged landscapes, and more. All selected papers represent innovative ideas, philosophical overviews and state-of-the-art discussions on aspects of complexity. The book will be useful as instructional material for senior undergraduate and entry-level graduate students in computer science, physics, applied mathematics and engineering-type work in the area of complexity. The book will also be valuable as a resource of knowledge for practitioners who want to apply complexity to solve real-life problems in their own challenging applications. The authors and editors hope that readers will be inspired to do their own experiments and simulations, based on information reported in this book, thereby moving beyond the scope of the book.

Prediction of behavior of the dynamical systems, analysis and modeling of its structure is vitally important problem in engineering, economy and science today. Examples of such systems can be seen in the world around us and of course in almost every scientific discipline including such "exotic" domains like the earth's atmosphere, turbulent fluids, economies (exchange rate and stock markets), population growth, physics (control of plasma), information flow in social networks and its dynamics, chemistry and complex networks. To understand such dynamics and to use it in research or industrial applications, it is important to create its models. For this purpose there is rich spectra of methods, from classical like ARMA models or Box Jenkins method to such modern ones like evolutionary computation, neural networks, fuzzy logic, fractal geometry, deterministic chaos and more. This proceeding book is a collection of the accepted papers to conference Nostradamus that has been held in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Proceeding also comprises of outstanding keynote speeches by distinguished guest speakers: Guanrong Chen (Hong Kong), Miguel A. F. Sanjuan (Spain), Gennady Leonov and Nikolay Kuznetsov (Russia), Petr Skoda (Czech Republic). The main aim of the conference is to create periodical possibility for students, academics and researchers to exchange their ideas and novel methods. This conference will establish forum for presentation and discussion of recent trends in the area of applications of various predictive methods for researchers, students and academics.

This proceeding book of Nostradamus conference (http://nostradamus-conference.org) contains accepted papers presented at this event in 2012. Nostradamus conference was held in the one of the biggest and historic city of Ostrava (the Czech Republic, http://www.ostrava.cz/en), in September 2012. Conference topics are focused on classical as well as modern methods for prediction of dynamical systems with applications in science, engineering and economy. Topics are (but not limited to): prediction by classical and novel methods, predictive control, deterministic chaos and its control, complex systems, modelling and prediction of its dynamics and much more.

This timely Handbook is based on the principle that disasters are social constructions and focuses on social science disaster research. It provides an interdisciplinary approach to disasters with theoretical, methodological, and practical applications. Attention is given to conceptual issues dealing with the concept "disaster" and to methodological issues relating to research on disasters. These include Geographic Information Systems as a useful research tool and its implications for future research. This seminal work is the first interdisciplinary collection of disaster research as it stands now while outlining how the field will continue to grow.

Our life is a highly nonlinear process. It starts with birth and ends with death; in between there are a lot of ups and downs. Quite often, we believe that stable and steady situations, probably easy to capture by linearization, are paradisiacal, but already after a short period of everyday routine we usually become bored and seek change, that is, nonlinearities. If we reflect for a while, we notice that our life and our perceptions are mainly determined by nonlinear phenomena, for example, events occurring suddenly and unexpectedly. One may be surprised by how long scientists tried to explain our world by models based on a linear ansatz. Due to the lack of typical nonlinear patterns, although everybody experienced nonlinearities, nobody could classify them and, thus, . study them further. The discoveries of the last few decades have finally provided access to the world of nonlinear phenomena and have initiated a unique inter disciplinary field of research: nonlinear science. In contrast to the general tendency of science to become more branched out and specialized as the result of any progress, nonlinear science has brought together many different disciplines. This has been motivated not only by the immense importance of nonlinearities for science, but also by the wonderful simplicity ohhe concepts. Models like the logistic map can be easily understood by high school students and have brought revolutionary new insights into our scientific under standing."