Microscopic systems operating far from equilibrium are fundamentally constrained by thermodynamics. In particular, the precision and the duration of nonequilibrium processes is limited by their dissipation. However, in complex mesoscopic systems the dissipation of single processes is hardly estimated, and these bounds may become loose due to kinematic aspects.
I will present two coarse-graining methods, based on large deviations theory and network analysis, to tackle these problems, and sketch possible applications in the context of electronic circuits (reliability of memories) and chemical reaction networks (pathway switches in metabolism).
