Resilience

What is Resilience?

Resilience Defined

• The capacity of a system, enterprise, or person to maintain its core purpose and integrity in the face of dramatically changed circumstances

Features of Disruptions• Upheavals

– Triggered by seemingly harmless events

– Arrive with little warning– Reveal hidden, almost absurd

correlations• Reveal dependencies between

spheres – Typically studied, discussed in

isolation

Resilience: Basic Questions• What causes one system to

break, another to rebound?• How much change can a system

absorb and still retain its integrity and purpose?

• What characteristics make up a system adaptive to change?

• How do we build in better shock absorbers?

Relevant to

• The Planet• Societies• Economies• Communities• Companies• Ourselves

Contributing Disciplines• Engineers• Emergency responders• Ecologists• Sociologists• Businesses• Individuals• Agree on this:

– Resilience results in continuity and recovery in the face of change

Goals for Systems

• Anticipate disruption• Heal when breached• Reorganize to maintain core

purpose–Even in radically changed

conditions

Strategies

• Sufficient reserves• Diversity inputs• Real-time data• Autonomy for constituent

parts• Firebreaks

–Disturbance in one part does not disrupt the whole

Tool Kit for Systemic Resilience• Tight feedback loops• Dynamic reorganization• Built-in countermechanisms• Decoupling• Diversity• Modularity• Simplicity• Swarming• Clustering

How does Resilience relate to• Robustness• Redundancy• Recovery

Translation to People• Beliefs, values, habits of

mind• Role of trust & cooperating• Diversity• Strong communities• Translational leaders• Adaptive governance

Robust, Yet Fragile

RYF Defined

• Complex systems that are resilient in the face of anticipated dangers

• But highly susceptible to unanticipated threats

John Doyle, CIT

Resilient Processes & Practices• Measure the whole health of the

system• Model and stress-test the system• Scan for emerging disruptions

– Mobilize the right, inclusive responses

• Build in feedback, compensatory systems– Keep system in check

• Keep system dynamic, reconfigurable

Warning Signs - Sugihara• Critical slowing• Synchrony

Thought to Ponder

• Embedded contercyclical structures–Essential strategy of resilient

systems–Why are they not more

frequently employed?

Discussion

• What about compensatory systems?

• They swell until they become a source of potential fragility themselves