In applied physics, the concept of controlling self-organized criticality refers to the control of processes by which a self-organized system dissipates energy.
The objective of the control is to reduce the probability of occurrence of and size of energy dissipation bursts, often called avalanches, of self-organized systems.
Dissipation of energy in a self-organized critical system into a lower energy state can be costly for society, since it depends on avalanches of all sizes usually following a kind of power law distribution and large avalanches can be damaging and disruptive.
[1][2][3] Several strategies have been proposed to deal with the issue of controlling self-organized criticality: There are several events that arise in nature or society and that these ideas of control may help to avoid:[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] The failure cascades in electrical transmission and financial sectors occur because economic forces that push for efficiency cause these systems to operate near a critical point, where avalanches of indeterminate size become possible.
Financial investments that are vulnerable to this kind of failure may exhibit a Taleb distribution.