The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Risk Academy, a Nexortium programmeSystems and Nexus StudiesDepartment of Systemic Risk and Complexity
Thresholds, early warning signals and the resilience that keeps systems away from them
Some changes are gradual until they are not: an ice sheet passes the point of no return, a forest turns to savanna, a fishery collapses, a market seizes.
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Twin figures for the Tonle Sap and the Lower Mekong at Phnom Penh, counted from its layers at their stated dates.
For Tipping points and resilience of Earth and social systems: the faculty's twin of Tonle Sap on the planet map, the globe and in 3D. Pick a generator, switch layers, run the instruments; every layer prints its provider and date.
Drag to move, right drag or Shift with a drag to turn and tilt, Ctrl with the wheel to zoom. Keyboard: arrows move, Shift with arrows turn and tilt, + and - zoom, 0 resets, V steps through the views, Escape clears.
Flat plan of the same data: the lake and rivers, the dams, the plants by capacity, the cropland and tree cover cells and the numbers below. The 3D twin opens on devices with WebGL once its data and library have been checked; discharge, vegetation, surface water and the annual land cover load in the twin on request, each with its data date.
The map loads from this site as it nears the view (MapLibre 6.9.1, checked by hash).
The discipline teaches the mathematics of alternative stable states and hysteresis, the early warning signals of critical slowing down in variance and autocorrelation, the climate tipping elements and the cascades between them, social and economic tipping, and positive tipping points that accelerate the transition. The Global Tipping Points Report of October 2025 assessed warm-water coral reefs as past their thermal tipping point. A graduate can detect early warning signals in a time series, explain why a threshold is uncertain and set out how resilience is measured.
This area covers thresholds beyond which a system shifts abruptly and often irreversibly to another state, in the climate, in ecosystems and in societies and markets. It is taught in the department of Systemic Risk and Complexity, Faculty of Systems and Nexus Studies, through courses still to be authored.
9 subtopics, taught across its courses and labs.
News and research as they are published, per discipline, with the faculty's other tools.
The newest research, preprints, news and humanitarian reports for Tipping points and resilience of Earth and social systems, each with its source and date, load here. Open the research and news hub
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Earn two discipline achievements in the Department of Systemic Risk and Complexity. In preparation.
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