In this talk we explore methodologies to recover patterns giving rise to hierarchical structures in complex systems. We use percolation theory to uncover the hierarchical organisation of the UK derived from the road network, and extend this formalism to look at the clustering of firms. We use data at micro-level and explore the concentration of firms before and after the 2008 crisis.
Elsa Arcaute is a physicist with a masters in Mathematics (part III of the Mathematical Tripos) and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her doctoral research was on Clifford algebras applied to Penrose’s twistors, and to multi-particle wave-functions. She moved to the field of Complex Systems while visiting Prof. Henrik Jensen at the Complexity and Networks group at Imperial College London. Later she joined the group as a postdoc where, working with Prof. Kim Christensen as part of a multidisciplinary project funded by the EPSRC, her research focused on self-regulation in social systems. The work was done alongside Dr Ana Sendova-Franks, a biologist who manipulated ant colonies, Dr Torbjorn Dahl, an engineer who programmed robots, and Dr Angela Espinosa, a social scientist who developed an intervention for the viability of an Irish eco-village.
Currently, she is a Lecturer in Spatial Modelling and Complexity at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), and Co-Investigator of an EPSRC grant on Digital Economies, and a MacArthur funded research project on Smart Cities. Previously she was part of an ERC (European Research Council) funded project lead by Prof. Michael Batty entitled MECHANICITY: Morphology, Energy and Climate cHANge In the CITY.