Data-driven prediction in dynamical systems: recent developments

In recent years, we have witnessed a significant shift toward ever-more complex and ever-larger-scale systems in the majority of the grand societal challenges tackled in applied sciences. The need to comprehend and predict the dynamics of complex systems have spurred developments in large-scale simulations and a multitude of methods across several disciplines. The goals of understanding and prediction in complex dynamical systems, however, have been hindered by high dimensionality, complexity and chaotic behaviours. Recent advances in data-driven techniques and machine-learning approaches have revolutionized how we model and analyse complex systems. The integration of these techniques with dynamical systems theory opens up opportunities to tackle previously unattainable challenges in modelling and prediction of dynamical systems. While data-driven prediction methods have made great strides in recent years, it is still necessary to develop new techniques to improve their applicability to a wider range of complex systems in science and engineering. This focus issue shares recent developments in the field of complex dynamical systems with emphasis on data-driven, data-assisted and artificial intelligence-based discovery of dynamical systems. This article is part of the theme issue 'Data-driven prediction in dynamical systems'.