Introduction to resilience of socio-technical systems

Abstract

In recent years the resilience concept has received considerable attention in a wide range of disciplines, from engineering and biology to the health and social sciences, business and policy, and beyond. With the different interests of these disciplines come important nuances in the way resilience is interpreted. Some of these nuances find their expressions in the various chapters of this Handbook and are illustrated through corresponding case examples and applications. Common to all is the notion that resilience – the ability to withstand or bounce back from some shock – is inherently a systems feature. What relevant system elements interact with each other, how these interactions manifest themselves through space and time and how they can be shaped through active intervention are all key issues in resilience research. However, resilience has become more than a systems feature to be observed and shaped. It is increasingly taking on normative values. Overall system resilience is typically perceived as desirable; ecosystems that quickly return to their structure and function and display high species diversity and richness after a drought or fire for example, infrastructures that continue to provide services during some seismic event, or societies that bounce back from an economic shock, all are preferred to those that do not retain or make it back to their original performance levels. However, depending on long-term goals, resilience may also hinder development. For example, many economies exhibit persistent power imbalances that present considerable inertia to change. The situation may manifest itself in the form of inequities in standards of living and seriously curtailed opportunities for a wide segment of the population – women and minorities underpaid for their labor, children exploited, rights of owners of land and other resources being disrespected. To the extent that the associated injustices further entrench and reinforce the mechanisms for unjust treatment, the system remains, undesirably, resilient to change. To ensure resilience sometimes requires that the performance of some part of the system is sacrificed. Typical engineering examples include fuses and circuit breakers, which are designed to absorb and shield the remainder of the system from excessive shock. On a larger scale, the shedding of parts of an electricity grid in order to stabilize operations for the rest of the grid is such an example. In the business and policy world, individuals are removed from their posts and entire units are abolished or reorganized to protect firms or governments from widespread collapse. Which subsystems to sacrifice, and when to do so, may not always be clear a priori, especially if the magnitude and duration of a shock to the system are not well known. Similarly, which system components and interconnections to strengthen, and how to do so, in anticipation of possible shocks is a challenge common to the management of natural, engineered and social systems alike. Of particular interest to this volume is not so much the resilience of technical or social systems on their own, but how the two interact with each other to promote or undermine