Understanding Complex Systems: When Big Data meets Network Science

Abstract

Better understanding and controlling complexsystems has become a grand challenge not only for com-puter science, but also for the natural and social sciences.Many of these systems have in common that they can bestudied from a network perspective. Consequently meth-ods from network science have proven instrumental intheir analysis. In this article, I introduce the macroscopicperspectivethatisattheheartofnetworkscience. Summa-rizing my recent research activities, I discuss how a com-bination of this perspective with Big Data methods can im-prove our understanding of complex systems.