Engineers often think of two types of resilience. [1] The complex and adaptive nature of reality forces us into one type of resilience: social-ecological resilience.
Resilience is the capacity to deal with change and continue to develop. [1]
The very nature of the intricate inter-dependencies between human society and the ecology within which we live demands we consider all our systems as social-ecological ones.
Engineering resilience
For a system, engineering resilience is 'the time of return to a global equilibrium following a disturbance' [2]. Only one global equilibrium state?
Ecological resilience
Ecological resilience is 'the amount of disturbance that a system can absorb before it changes state' [3]. Wait, multiple equilibrium states?
Historical clash
Holling originally noted that these two types of resilience oppose each other [2] nearly 40 years ago (1973). Engineering resilience focuses on efficiency and predictability, while ecological resilience focuses on adaptiveness and unpredictability.
Do we have perfect future knowledge for our projects and their settings? Disaster response management, business continuity, emergency preparedness and climate adaptation all stem from social needs and influence engineering criteria. In our local context, Emergency Management British Columbia has identified the Sendai Framework on disaster risk reduction [5] as a path towards social resilience. This involves increased complexity, diversity and collaboration; including during reconstruction to "Build Back Better". Ultimately, this will extend to all projects. Why build back better, when you can built it better to begin with?
Social-ecological resilience
The broader engineering context is how society fits inside ecology. Social systems intertwine and depend on ecological systems. [6] The intertwined systems have multiple stable states. We are leaving a stable state that we enjoyed for 10,000 years and built our society on. We very likely will consider other stable states undesirable.
Resilience is the capacity of a social-ecological system to absorb or withstand perturbations and other stressors such that the system remains within the same regime, essentially maintaining its structure and functions. It describes the degree to which the system is capable of self-organization, learning and adaptation (Holling 1973, Gunderson & Holling 2002, Walker et al. 2004).
Other thoughts
The Stockholm Resilience Centre hosts many resources suitable for engineers to rapidly learn the fundamentals.
- "What is resilience?" [7]
- "Applying resilience thinking" [8]
- "Resilience video school" [9]
For more details, we can dig into dedicated resilience thinking texts, disaster reduction texts, and community resilience texts.
All of our current thinking treats the year 2030 as our next milestone. This follows from our last milestone, 2015. We aim for sustainability and resilience in 2030. As engineers, is it our responsibility to drive our society towards our 2030 target? Can we take our society further-- beyond sustainability, as it were?
[1]:Stockholm Resilience Centre. Resilience dictionary
[2]:Holling, C.S. (1973) 'Resilience and stability of ecosystems', Annual Review of Ecol. and Syst. 4: 2-23. (Cited in Hazards and the Built Environment, 'A case for built-in resilience', L. Bosher)
[3]:Gunderson, L. Holling, C.S. Pritchard, L. Peterson, G.D. (2002) 'Resilience', in H.A. Mooney and J.G. Canadell (eds) The Earth System: Biological and Ecological Dimensions of Global Environmental Change. Volume 2. John Wiley and Sons. Chichester. (Cited in Hazards and the Built Environment, 'A case for built-in resilience', L. Bosher)
[4]:Holling, C.S. (1996) 'Engineering resilience vs. ecological resilience', in P.C. Schulze (ed) Engineering within Ecological Restraints. National Academy Press. Washington, DC.
[5]:UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction
[6]:Resilience Alliance. Resilience
[7]:Stockholm Resilience Centre. What is resilience?
[8]:Applying resilience thinking_
[9]:Stockholm Resilience Centre. Resilience Video School
[11]:Government of BC. Government's Action Plan: Responding to wildfire and flood risks
[12]:Martin Reeves How to build a business that lasts 100 years (TED)