The document discusses attributes of resilience and how they can be used to assess and improve resilience. It defines resilience from engineering and ecological perspectives. Key attributes that indicate resilience are discussed, such as stability, adaptive capacity, and readiness. The document provides an example resilience assessment of a notional combat outpost that examines how well it could continue operating under different disturbance scenarios based on its resilience attributes. The assessment identifies vulnerabilities and recommendations to improve resilience, such as increasing on-site reserves and cross-training personnel. In conclusion, assessing resilience attributes can reveal factors that undermine mission success and support better decision-making.

1. Attributes of Resilience
Presentation to
Bays & Bayous Symposium 2014
Scott Thomas, Stetson Engineers Inc.
David Kerner, The Tauri Group LLC
December 2, 2014

2. AGENDA
• Resilience Concepts
• Resilience Attributes and Metrics
• Resilience Assessment

3. RESILIENCE: DISPARATE DEFINITIONS

4. • Engineering definition:
• Amount of disturbance that system can resist; speed of return
to equilibrium
• Focus is on building and maintaining the efficiency or
optimizing for a particular function.
• Ecological definition:
• Amount of disturbance that system can absorb without
changing structure, feedbacks, function, overall identity
• Focus is on continued existence of the system… and continuity
of the organizational mission.
WHAT IS ‘RESILIENCE’?

5. RESILIENCE THEORY IN PRACTICE
• Ecological Restoration
• Forestry and Fisheries
• Military (energy and supply chain
management)
• Community Preparedness and Disaster
Response
• Water and Energy Resources
• Commerce and Finance

6. How do we determine “whether and how key investments in
prevention, protection, response, recovery, and mitigation are
appropriately targeted. This has been a challenge…how do
we know our efforts have been effective and that we are better
prepared today. What assessments are needed to know we
have been effective.”
National Conversation on Disaster Resilience in America: Workshop Summary 2013 –
Keynote Address: Richard Reed, Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland
Security
THE NEED

7. • Optimization leads to tunnel vision and myopia
• Planning assumptions don’t always hold true
• Systems fail in unpredictable ways
• Market failures, geopolitical shifts, demographics
• Shortages of water, fuel, fertilizer, minerals, etc.
• Epidemics, climate change, technology disruptions
• Resilient Systems continue to function despite the
challenges
CONVENTIONAL APPROACHES MISS

8. • Anticipates disruptions and tipping points
• Considers how policies and practices affect system
function in the face of unforeseen challenges
• Explores potential vulnerabilities from whole-system
viewpoint
• Examines connections and dependencies
• Considers how problems in one area can spread
throughout the system
• Makes mission continuity preeminent throughout
system
RESILIENCE PERSPECTIVE

9. Metrics for Resilience
All systems share attributes
by which resilience can be assessed.

10. ATTRIBUTES OF RESILIENCE
Stability
Adaptive
Capacity
Readiness
Single Points of Failure Response Diversity Situational Awareness
Controllable
Degradation
Collaborative Capacity
Simplicity/
Understandability
Resistance Connectivity Preparedness
Balance Reserves False Subsidies
Dispersion Learning Capacity Autonomy
Leadership & Initiative

11. STABILITY CATEGORY
Single Points of
Failure
Singular features or aspects of the system, the absence or
failure of which will cause the entire system to fail.
Pathways for
Controlled
Reductions in
Function
Whether the functionality of a system, operation, or capability
can be reduced in a manner that avoids the overwhelming
effects of an unconstrained failure.
Resistance The insensitivity of the system to stresses of a given size,
duration, or character.
Balance The degree to which a system is not skewed toward one
strength at the expense of others.
Dispersion The degree to which the system is distributed over space and
time.

12. ADAPTIVE CAPACITY CATEGORY
Response Diversity
The variety and disparity of steps, measures, and functions
by which an operation can carry out a task or achieve a
mission
Collaborative
Capacity The capacity to act through coordinated engagement.
Connectivity How readily resources and information can be exchanged to
ensure continued functionality.
Abundance/
Reserves
The on-hand resource stores (capital) upon which a system
can rely when responding
to stress.
Learning Capacity
The ability to acquire, through training, experience, or
observation, the knowledge, skills, and capabilities needed
to ensure system functionality.

13. READINESS CATEGORY
Situational
Awareness
How well system, component, and functional capabilities
are monitored. How readily emerging stresses or failures
can be detected.
Simplicity/
Understandability
How well system functions and capabilities can be
understood.
Preparedness The level of preparation in plans, procedures, personnel,
and equipment for responding to system perturbations.
False Subsidies Whether inputs, outputs, or internal processes receive
incentives disproportionate or unrelated to their value.
Autonomy
A system manager’s authority to select and employ
alternate actions, configurations, and components in
response to stress.

14. ENABLING TRAITS
Leadership and
Initiative
The ability to motivate, mobilize, and provide direction in
response to disruptions, as well as the ability to assume
responsibility and act.

15. EXAMPLE – RESPONSE DIVERSITY
• Definition: The variety and disparity of steps, measures, and functions by which an
operation can achieve a given mission or task.
• Targeting Queries:
• How easily can a mission, task, or function be accomplished in different ways or with different
resources? How readily can this be done under stressed conditions?
• How many, how varied, and how well known are the options to accomplish a task?
• How well covered are all aspects, components, features, and functions of the system?
• To what degree can substitute or redundant capabilities, components, subsystems, controls, resources,
skill sets, or features be combined, modified, or directly employed?
• At what cost to the system – immediately or over time – are substitutes employed?
• What burdens are placed on the system to maintain redundancies? Does the presence of redundancies
foster complacency?
• How easily can response flexibility be incorporated into the system? Can changes in rules or resources
foster more creative responses to stressors?

16. JOURNAL ARTICLE ON RESILIENCE
ATTRIBUTES
Resources 2014, 3, 1-x
www.mdpi.com/journal/resources
Resilience Attributes of Social-Ecological Systems:
Framing Metrics for Management
David A. Kerner and J. Scott Thomas
Accepted: 22 November 2014

17. Performing a resilience assessment
to gauge the stability, adaptive
capacity, and readiness of a system
– its Resilience.

18. GRAPHIC OF NOTIONAL COP
COMBAT OUTPOST (COP)
Notional Depiction - Image source: Barbaricum

19. RESILIENCE ASSESSMENT OF COP
Assessed scenario for all 15
resilience properties
Under 3 disturbance scenarios
For each of the 10 mission-
essential and support functions
 Mission-Essential
◦ Patrols/QRF
◦ Internal Security
◦ C4ISR
◦ Training
◦ Observation Post
◦ CMO
 Supporting
◦ Supply
◦ Utilities
◦ Life Support
◦ Motor Transport

20. Forward
Operating
Base
Local
Economy
BOUNDING THE COMBAT OUTPOST
Assessment
Observation
Post
Personnel
Flows
Flows
Flows
Internal
Flows
Stocks/Reserves
Rules/
Policies

21. 1) Horizontal Analysis
2) Vertical Analysis

22. Tactical Ops
Center / Comm.
Training
Civil‐Military
Operations
Internal
Security
Life Support
Observation
Post
Motor
Transport
Supply
Utilities
Fuel Stores
Landing Zone
Fuel/Supply
Retrieval
Tenants
Airdrop
Deliveries
Quick Reaction
Force
Patrols
Materiel
Information
Electricity
Movement
3) Whole System

23. • Maintain greater on-site reserves (Abundance/Reserves)
• Determine options for additional wells and other local water
sources (Response Diversity)
• Cross-train personnel to increase back-up for key skill sets
(Learning Capacity, Single Point of Failure)
• Increase use of generator networking and distributed power
(Dispersion, Controllable Degradation, Single Points of
Failure)
SELECT RECOMMENDATIONS

24. CONCLUSIONS FROM STUDY
• This methodology reveals factors that can undermine
mission success
• Whole system perspective helps focus analytical efforts for greatest
benefit and least harm
• Identifies cascading problems can compromise mission
• Methodology helps ID problems in advance
• Highlights vulnerabilities within system and with adjacent systems
• Resilience analysis yields practical insights
• Supports informed decision-making based on concrete findings
• Additional line of evidence for making decisions for managing facilities
and resources

25. TYING IT ALL TOGETHER
• Resilience is a system’s ability to function “normally” in
response to external stressors.
• We can characterize a system’s Resilience by assessing
Metrics based on Resilience Attributes.
• We can develop plans using resilience metrics to delineate
susceptibility to forced change in specific areas/functions.

26. QUESTIONS?

27. BUILDING RESILIENCE
• Recognize need for Resilience rather
than just Efficiency
• Invest in Diversity
• Create options for sustaining mission, even with
supply perturbation
• Water and Energy sources & types
• Response diversity – systems and platforms
• Tight control (engineering/economic/administrative)
can hasten collapse