A metric and frameworks for resilience analysis of engineered and infrastructure systems

Abstract

In this paper, we have reviewed various approaches to defining resilience and the assessment of resilience. We have seen that while resilience is a useful concept, its diversity in usage complicates its interpretation and measurement. In this paper, we have proposed a resilience analysis framework and a metric for measuring resilience. Our analysis framework consists of system identification, resilience objective setting, vulnerability analysis, and stakeholder engagement. The implementation of this framework is focused on the achievement of three resilience capacities: adaptive capacity, absorptive capacity, and recoverability. These three capacities also form the basis of our proposed resilience factor and uncertainty-weighted resilience metric. We have also identified two important unresolved discussions emerging in the literature: the idea of resilience as an epistemological versus inherent property of the system, and design for ecological versus engineered resilience in socio-technical systems. While we have not resolved this tension, we have shown that our framework and metric promote the development of methodologies for investigating “deep” uncertainties in resilience assessment while retaining the use of probability for expressing uncertainties about highly uncertain, unforeseeable, or unknowable hazards in design and management activities.