L. Andrew Bollinger PhD student Section Energy & Industry Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management TU Delft 19 March 2012 SPM 4530 Resilience in complex socio-technical systems

Contents 1.Background – my research 2.Resilience and related concepts 3.Resilience and complex adaptive systems 4.Infrastructure resilience 5.Demonstration models

Background Adaptation of electricity infrastructures to climate change Hurricane Katrina (2005)Pakistan floods (2010)European heat wave (2006) Research question: How can we develop effective strategies to support the resilience of the Dutch electricity infrastructure to climate change? Approach: Socio-technical systems Complex adaptive systems

Source: De Haan, J, et al. Framing flexibility. Futures. 43:9, 923–933. Resilience and related concepts De Haan et al. (2011): A flexible infrastructure constellation can be employed differently to keep on meeting a societal need under changed circumstances An adaptive infrastructure constellation can be altered to keep on meeting a societal need under changed circumstances A resilient infrastructure constellation can resume meeting a societal need under changed circumstances A robust infrastructure constellation can keep on meeting a societal need under changed circumstances

Robustness vs. resilience Robustness – some definitions: The ability to sustain a disruption (Quirk and Fernandez) The capacity (of a complex system) to maintain some desired system characteristics despite fluctuations in the behavior of its components or its environment (Carlson). Image source: Husdal, 2009

What are some characteristics of a robust (electricity) infrastructure? Robustness vs. resilience

What are some characteristics of a resilient (electricity) infrastructure? Robustness vs. resilience

Resilience – some definitions: 1.The ability to bounce back from large scale disruptions (Sheffi). 2.The ability of a system to gracefully degrade and to quickly self-recover to a normal state (Mili). 3.The ability of a system to recover from adversity, either back to its original state or an adjusted state based on new requirements (McCarthy). Resilience Image source: Husdal, 2009

Nonlinearity Emergence Adaptiveness Chaos Path dependency Multiple attractors Systems in which macro-level patterns are viewed as emerging from the actions and interactions of numerous “agents” Complex adaptive systems

Attractor: A set of states to which a complex system is attracted Periodic attractor (limit cycle) Point attractor Multiple attractors Attractors in complex adaptive systems

Resilience: “The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks—in other words, stay in the same basin of attraction.“ (Walker, et al. 2004) Stability landscape Basin of attraction Resilience in social-ecological systems

Source: Scheffer, 1999 Basins of attraction in shallow lake ecosystems Attractor 1 Attractor 2 Resilience in social-ecological systems

? ? ? ? ? What attractors exist in an electricity infrastructure?

“Normal” operation 100% load demand satisfaction 50 Hz network frequency 220v demand-side voltage Rolling blackout Fluctuating load demand satisfaction Fluctuating voltage & power flows within a particular grid area (periodic attractor?) Uncontrolled blackout 0% load demand satisfaction Brownout Stable lower voltage Reduced functionality of loads Demand-side regulation? Attractors in electricity infrastructures

1. Attractors as “modes of operation” in the power system 2. Attractors as stable combinations of technologies and institutions in the power system Current attractor Fossil fuel combustion technologies Vertically operated grid Heavily redundant grid structure (n-1) Expectation of constant load demand satisfaction Alternative attractor Small-scale renewables Distributed generation Horizontally operated grid Less reliance on HV grid Attractors in electricity infrastructures

Evolutionary timescale Operational timescale Attractors in electricity infrastructures Interaction between timescales

Adaptive cycles and panarchy Panarchy Adaptive cycle Source: Holling, 1986

Source: Brugge and Rotmans, 2007 Source: Geels and Kemp, 2000 Smith & Stirling, 2010: Is resilience always desirable in socio-technical systems? Attractors vs. regimes in transition theory

A key difference between ecological and technical systems: In technical systems, shifts between attractors, and often the existence of these attractors at all, are managed (albeit incompletely) by the system’s social components. Resilience in social-ecological systems: The capacity of a system to remain within a given basin of attraction. Resilience in socio-technical / infrastructure systems: The capacity to manage shifts between attractors (for the purpose of preserving an infrastructure service). Resilience in socio-technical systems

Resilience in socio-technical systems – an example “Afgelopen winter werd door het extreme weer het hele treinverkeer een paar keer stilgelegd. Om dit te voorkomen hebben de NS en ProRail geïnvesteerd in technische aanpassingen van treinen en het plaatsen van wisselwarmers.... Ook is er een speciale winterdienstregeling ontworpen, die in kan worden gezet bij extreem winterweer.” – NOS, Oct. 2010

Resilience in socio-technical systems Demonstration model 1

Resilience in socio-technical systems Demonstration model 2

Resilience in socio-technical systems Demonstration model 2 Operational timescale Evolutionary timescale

Source: Renewables International Minutes Average interruption time per customer per year (2007) A robust electricity infrastructure?