Toward Inherently Secure and Resilient Societies

Abstract

Recent years have seen a number of challenges to social stability and order, ranging from terrorist attacks and natural disasters to epidemics such as AIDS and SARS. Such challenges have generated specific policy responses, such as enhanced security at transportation hubs and planned deployment of a global tsunami detection network. However, the range of challenges and the practical impossibility of adequately addressing each in turn argue for adoption of a more comprehensive systems perspective. This should be based on the principle of enhancing social and economic resiliency as well as meeting security and emergency response needs and, to the extent possible, developing and implementing dual-use technologies that offer societal benefits even if anticipated disasters never occur.

Uncertain Mobilities

“…In the past a broken cart could be more easily moved or by-passed than a large lorry jack-knifed across a road. 57 It can be suggested that as virtual mobility has increased rapidly in speed over the past three decades, physical mobility has remained largely static or, in some instances, has slowed (for example due to congestion). This apparent contradiction, and associated expectations, can lead to additional travel frustration, while the private car and mobile technologies may have contributed to a (mostly false) feeling that we can control situations better than was the case in the past.…”

Earth Systems Engineering and Management: A Manifesto

“…Redundancy assumes, however, that the challenge to the system is of a known variety. Resiliency, to the contrary, is the ability of a system to resist degradation or, when it must degrade, to do so gracefully even under unanticipated conditions (15).…”

La vulnérabilité des systèmes socioécologiques aux événements extrêmes : exposition, sensibilité, résilience

“…Les systèmes résilients disposent ainsi de mécanismes variés qui leur permettent de faire face aux changements et aux crises (Gunderson et Holling, 2002 ;Allenby et Fink, 2005 ;Adger et al, 2005). Dans les systèmes écolo-giques, la redondance fonctionnelle créée par la diversité spécifique et l'hétérogénéité paysagère correspondent à de tels mécanismes.…”