The MaPS seminar is a hybrid event; held from 16.00 - 17.00 hrs in room ZI-4070 and via TEAMS.
Feel free to reach out if you want to present your work in an upcoming session!
Send us an email!
The MaPhS organizers,
Maike de Jongh, Patryk Rygiel and Lars Schroeder
upcoming dates:
2026:
- 11 March 2026
Speaker: Maike de Jongh
Title: Preventing large-scale avalanches in the two-dimensional Abelian sandpile model through strategic interventions
Abstract: The Abelian sandpile model is a classic example of a system in which critical behavior emerges independently of external parameters, a phenomenon known as self-organized criticality. In this model, sand grains are added randomly to vertices of a graph. Whenever a vertex collects too many sand grains, it topples and redistributes its mass to its neighbors, a mechanism that may trigger large cascading events. Such avalanches are frequently used to model catastrophic phenomena in real-world systems, such as earthquakes, financial market crashes, and forest fires. Motivated by these applications, we study intervention strategies aimed at mitigating avalanche sizes in the Abelian sandpile model. We present theoretical results on how removing sand grains at designated locations affects the expected avalanche size. In addition, we evaluate several heuristic strategies and investigate their long-term impact on the evolution of the system. Our findings demonstrate the potential of strategic interventions in stabilizing self-organized critical systems.