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