IAU Symposium 382, Complex Planetary Systems II (CPS II), presented a real opportunity to show the power of interdisciplinary collaboration through gathering astronomers of many disciplines together. Complex systems are those composed of interacting parts whose local behavior, resulting from the interactions between them, cannot provide a complete understanding of the global, macroscopic behaviour. This requires complex systems to be studied by transdisciplinary teams, who together are able to understand the whole construction and critically analyze the connections among the different levels of description. The huge number of available observations, from ground and space, their improved precision, and the computational power available today, have spectacularly changed the nature of the dynamical models, especially for planetary evolution studies. CPS II, a Kavli–IAU Symposium, opened new doors, created collaborations, exchanges of ideas, and combinations of techniques – sometimes unexpected – to meet the challenges of the complex astronomical systems.
The huge number of available observations, from ground and space, their improved precision, and the computing power available today, have spectacularly changed the nature of dynamical models of planetary evolution. IAU S382 (CPS II) gathered astronomers of many disciplines together to critically analyse these complex astronomical systems.
