Concepts and approaches to resilience in a variety of governance and regulatory domains

Abstract

President Obama's Executive Order and PresidentialDirective (E.O. 13636 2013; P.P.D. 21 2013) have called for resilience of the nation's infrastructure and environmental systems. Resilience has been defined by the US National Academy of Sciences as the ability to plan and prepare for, absorb, recover from, and adapt to adverse events (National Academy of Sciences 2012). There is increasing depth and variety of resilience-related research. There are differing approaches to quantifying resilience and a contrast between resilience and risk, which have implications for regulatory policies. Papers included in this Special Issue of Environment Systems & Decisions seek to characterize resilience methodologies and the applications across a variety of domains and topic areas. With many papers and special issues on resilience, the uniqueness of this issue is a tandem focus on quantifying resilience and contrasting of applications of resilience management in the US Federal Government.The issue starts with a review paper by Larkin et al. (2015) sampling efforts of the US Federal Government to address resilience. It is clear that multiple agencies attempt to formalize resilience and use it in their respective mission space. In many areas, the efforts are fragmented and divergent; more interagency collaboration and focus on developing comprehensive resilience management methodology are required. Part of the challenge in defining resilience is the complexity of agency mission space and diversity of needs. Several papers presented by scientists from the US Army illustrate the diversity of needs and applications including critical infrastructure and military installations. Rosati et al. (2015) introduce a three-tier approach to incorporating resilience into the US Army Corps of Engineers coastal engineering needs and programs. Fox-Lent et al. (2015) describe application of this approach for coastal communities in a case study from Rockaway Peninsula using a stakeholder-driven resilience matrix framework adapted from Linkov et al. (2013). Sikula et al. (2015) focus on integrating resilience in the case of sustaining missions at military installations. The paper argues for the enhancement of traditional engineering and risk approaches with socioeconomic system resilience principles. The proposed Military Installation Resilience Assessment aims to use resilience in the evaluation of both known and unknown hazards.The literature is exploring the relationship and contrast of risk and resilience. Risk is often calculated as a product of threat, vulnerability, and consequences. Risk analysis often underemphasizes the time domain. Resilience accounts for the time domain when considering the planning, stress absorbing, recovery, and adaptation stage of system evolution. Baum (2015) presents arguments for a close connection between risk and resilience. He describes how risk and resilience require supplementary information. He suggests giving balanced consideration to each of the concepts, which should be deployed in conjunction.The issue ...

Assessing Engineering Resilience for Systems with Multiple Performance Measures

“…This survivability depends upon several factors, including the system's vulnerabilities. Researchers often connect vulnerability to risk since risk is calculated using threat, vulnerability, and consequence (Linkov, Larkin, & Lambert, ).…”

Grasping the nettle? Considering the contemporary challenges of risk assessment

“…Pre-emptive risk anticipation strategies emerge in circumstances in which early risk identification may prevent the production of risks of large magnitude. Strategies designed to build resilience focus primarily on alleviating the effects of hazardous events such as informing the public about risks and relating mitigation plans (Linkov, Larkin, and Lambert 2015). The challenge for all public bodies is to find a point at which intervention should occur.…”

“…evacuating people from the probable avalanche path). However, the tension between the concepts of anticipation and resilience to be considered by regulators and risk managers remains an ongoing challenge, as consistently highlighted in various literatures (see Linkov, Larkin, and Lambert 2015;Foster 2012;Turner and Pidgeon 1997;Wildavsky 1985).…”

“…Given the above, assessment of risks is a major issue for regulatory bodies. The academic literature indicates that challenges are not only related to the sensitivity of risk assessments but also are connected to the: quality and scope of information (Mythen and Wardman 2016;Breyer 2009;European Commission 2000); allocation of resources and anticipatory resilience strategies (Mythen 2018;Linkov, Larkin, and Lambert 2015;Baldwin, Cave, and Lodge 2012); implementation of certain risk assessment tools and techniques (Boardman et al 2017;Baldwin, Cave, and Lodge 2012;Arrow et al 1996); assignment of liability (Baldwin, Cave, and Lodge 2012;Braithwaite and Fisse 1988); absence of appropriate knowledge exchange in practice (Heyman and Brown 2013;Lloyd-Bostock and Hutter 2008;Tait and Levidow 1992); lack of consensus on the acceptability level of risk; perception and categorisationof risks; overestimation or underestimation of risks; level of transparency and the involvement of the public in risk assessment and decision-making processes.…”

Concurrent threats and disasters: modeling and managing risk and resilience

“…Taking a resilience approach does not seek to identify every possible threat, but instead allocates resources to designing and protecting the system in such a way as to be able to bounce back quickly from disruptions. Risk and Resilience have been central themes of this Journal, including the topic of multiple Special Issues, including Volume 35, Issue 2 (Linkov et al 2015 ) and Volume 38, Issue 3 (Kete et al 2018 ). Risk and resilience have been discussed in other books and publications as well (see Linkov and Trump 2019 for review).…”