Article: Resilience in Engineering Systems
We have published a bit of an “instant classic” in Systems Engineering, the premier journal in the field of the same name. It has been made Open Access by Wiley - I would like to think because they feel everyone should read it! It was also recently included in the list of must-reads on resilience by the Journal of Systems Engineering.
In the paper, we provide an authoritative overview of resilience thinking (and practices), discussing the resilience “of what”, “to what”, and “how” (among other things).
Function, state and structure were the most commonly found performance variables that past resilience publications were concerned with.
Disruption is leading the way as condition variable to which resilience is important, followed by general change, specific events, damages, and adversity.
In terms of resilient properties, recovery was the most frequently cited, followed by absorption and adaptation (no surprises there)
There are many more good things in the paper, go and check it out!
Abstract
It is now widely recognized that many important events in the life cycle of complex engineering systems cannot be foreseen in advance. From its origin in ecological systems, operating without the use of foresight, resilience theory prescribes presuming ignorance about the future, and designing systems to manage unexpected events in whatever form they may take. However, much confusion remains as to what constitutes a resilient system and the implications for engineering systems. Taking steps toward a synthesis across a fragmented body of research, this paper analyses 251 definitions in the resilience literature, aiming to clarify key distinctions in the resilience concept. Asking resilience of what, to what, and how, we first distinguish systems serving higher ends and systems that are ends in themselves, and, within these, performance variables to be minimized, preserved, or maximized. Second, we distinguish systems subject to adverse events, adverse change, turbulence, favorable events, favorable change, and variation. Finally, we distinguish systems capable of recovery, absorption, improvement, graceful degradation, minimal deterioration, and survival. Together, these distinctions outline a morphology of resilient systems and suggest answers to the principal design questions, which must be asked of any resilient engineering system.
Citation
Wied, M., Oehmen, J., & Welo, T. (2020). Conceptualizing resilience in engineering systems: An analysis of the literature. Systems Engineering, 23(1), 3-13. https://doi.org/10.1002/sys.21491
