Resilience engineering: theory and practice in interdependent infrastructure systems

Abstract

The economy and well-being of modern societies relies on complex and interdependent infrastructure systems to enable delivery of utilities and movement of goods, people and services. This complexity has resulted in an increased potential for cascading failures, whereby small scale initial failures in one system can result in events of catastrophic proportions across the wider network. Resilience and the emerging concept of resilience engineering within infrastructure are among the main concerns of those managing such complex systems. However, the disparate nature of resilience engineering development in various academic and industrial regimes has resulted in a diversity of definitions and characterisations. These are discussed in this paper, as are the commonalities between sectors and between different engineering disciplines. The paper also highlights the various methodologies used as part of resilience engineering implementation and monitoring, current practices including existing approaches and metrics, and an insight into the opportunities and potential barriers associated with these methodologies and practices. This research was undertaken for the Resilience Shift initiative to shift the approach to resilience in practice for critical infrastructure sectors. The programme aims to help practitioners involved in critical infrastructure to make decisions differently, contributing to a safer and better world.

Towards Resilient Vital Infrastructure Systems: Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Research Agenda

“…There are two distinguished approaches in designing infrastructures: (1) Performance-oriented approach; and (2) Capacity-oriented approach. Performance-based engineering is a widely explored discourse in the literature (see Anderies et al, 2007;Filiatrault and Sullivan, 2014;Spence and Kareem, 2014;Restemeyer et al, 2017) representing one of the approaches in designing infrastructures that has emerged from an architectural context (Oxman, 2008;Mosalam et al, 2018;Hickford et al, 2018). This approach is broadly applied at the design stage (Hickford et al, 2018), and is based on capability of infrastructures to function and perform well in response to an expected pressure or disturbance.…”

“…Performance-based engineering is a widely explored discourse in the literature (see Anderies et al, 2007;Filiatrault and Sullivan, 2014;Spence and Kareem, 2014;Restemeyer et al, 2017) representing one of the approaches in designing infrastructures that has emerged from an architectural context (Oxman, 2008;Mosalam et al, 2018;Hickford et al, 2018). This approach is broadly applied at the design stage (Hickford et al, 2018), and is based on capability of infrastructures to function and perform well in response to an expected pressure or disturbance. The performance-oriented approach, which is also referred to as "control approach" (Hoekstra et al, 2018) or "robust control" (Anderies et al, 2007;Rodriguez et al, 2011), focuses on a system's performance to provide benefits for economic functions.…”

“…The emerging concept of resilience engineering within infrastructures (originated from the capacityoriented approach) is one of the main concerns in managing these systems (LRF, 2014; in which complex mechanisms are involved for planning, financing, designing and operating systems (Hickford et al, 2018). There is a wide range of definitions available in the recent literature for the concept of resilience engineering (e.g., Woods, 2015;Sharma et al, 2017;Hollnagel, 2017;Hickford et al, 2018; https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2020-12 Preprint. Discussion started: 10 March 2020 c Author(s) 2020.…”

“…Over the past decades, the focus of resilience studies has shifted from single assets to systems (i.e., natural, social, technical) and, more recently, to coupled socio-ecological and socio-technical systems (Galderisi, 2018). The generic and multi-disciplinary nature of resilience has led to a wide variety of definitions and interpretations (Meerow and Newell, 2015;Cimellaro et al, 2016;Hosseini et al, 2016;Ibanez et al, 2016;Connelly et al, 2017;Kurth et al, 2019;Patriarca et al, 2018;Xue et al, 2018;Hickford et al, 2018). A classic distinction between 'ecological resilience' and 'engineering resilience' was first made by Holling (1996) who identified a number of key differences between these two concepts.…”

“…A classic distinction between 'ecological resilience' and 'engineering resilience' was first made by Holling (1996) who identified a number of key differences between these two concepts. More recently, Hickford et al (2018) associates the resilience of socio-ecological systems with issues of security, emergency response, safety, environmental and ecological aspects whereas resilience engineering focuses mainly on the system's ability to bounce back to a steady state after a disturbance (Davoudi et al, 2012;Kim and Lim, 2016). In line with the latter definition, Hollnagel et al (2006) relates the resilience engineering concept to the ability of a system to cope with performance variability.…”