A complex network approach to crisis recovering in sport applications

Abstract

Network-based approaches may yield a powerful way to govern complex economic systems like the ones faced in sports, and, particularly, in football. The network approach should be pursued to identify which are the appropriate network structures and topologies that can improve robustness to economic crisis, for example, by facilitating integration and avoiding undesired synchronization events. This requires primarily the modelling of the interactions of structures and dynamics in complex networks that, in turn, strongly encourages a cross-disciplinary fertilization in order to apply models already accepted in other fields and whose impact on real-world problems have been evaluated. In fact, there is a lack of data adequately describing economic networks, nowadays built on intricate interdependencies, trade relations and supply chains on a worldwide scale. In this paper, we try to draw a general picture of what is implied by the complex network approach aiming to suggest models that can both reduce the systemic risk of cascading failures and facilitate the recovery from crisis. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.