Resilience management guidelines for critical infrastructures, translating resilience theory into practical and useful interventions

Resilience goes beyond safety and risk management encompassing the ability of organisations to proactively adapt to expected and unexpected situations (crisis, opportunities and changes). The literature on resilience is overwhelming, our systematic literature survey identified 300 different definitions on resilience, diverse developments. Hence, there is a need to translate this fragmented body of knowledge into consolidated practical solutions. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the final version of resilience management guidelines produced in the H2020 DARWIN project. Through a multidisciplinary approach, involving experts in the field of resilience, crisis and risk management and service providers in the Air Traffic Management, healthcare domains as well as representatives from other domains, the DARWIN project has produced evolving resilience management guidelines (DRMG). These guidelines are not prescriptive. Instead they enable organizations to have a critical view on their own crisis management activities. The DRMG are available in different formats for easy usage and maintenance to avoid them being dust-collectors on a shelf. In this way, organizations can adapt, adopt and integrate the guidelines into their own existing management practices and procedures. Through an iterative development process involving academia and practitioners, the guidelines are constructed around Capability Cards (CCs). The evaluation in pilot exercises and other activities involved 247 practitioners from 22 countries explored the possibility to adapt the CCs to the Healthcare and Air Traffic Management domains. It also consider the feasibility of generalizing them to other Critical Infrastructure domains. Our achievement is the current version of guidelines proposing practical interventions that end-users find useful. This paper represents and invitation to explore the content of the guidelines, to encourage its use and further developments of the resilience management

How Human Adaptive Systems Balance Fundamental Trade-offs: Implications For Polycentric Governance Architectures

Investigations into complex adaptive systems (CAS) have identified multiple trade-offs that place hard limits on the behavior of adaptive systems of any type. Complexity theory continues to search for a formalization that can unify these trade-offs around one or a few fundamental ones, and explain how observed tradeoffs are derived from the most basic ones (Alderson and Doyle, 2010). Resilience Engineering (RE) also arose from the recognition that basic trade-offs placed hard limits on the safety performance of teams and organizations in the context of pressures for systems to be “faster, better, cheaper” (Woods, 2006; Hollnagel, 2009). Combining the results from CAS on physical complex systems with the results from RE on high risk, high consequence human designed systems leads to a potential unification. The unification consists of (a) five basic trade-offs that bound the performance of all human adaptive systems (Hoffman and Woods, 2011), and (b) an architecture for polycentric control or governance based on regulating margin of maneuver to be able to dynamically balance the conflicts, risks and pressures that arise from the fundamental trade-offs

Colliding Dilemmas: Interactions Of Locally Adaptive Strategies In A Hospital Setting

One strategy that systems employ to remain resilient in the face of shifting demands is the creation and maintenance of margins of maneuver, cushions of potential actions and additional resources that allows the system to continue functioning despite unexpected demands. Systems are often comprised of units which have partial authority and autonomy to manage their individual margins of maneuver. In a study of emergency department interactions with other hospital units, we found that reorganizations to maintain margin could be classified into one of three categories: units could either defensively restrict the actions of other units or borrow margin from them, autonomously reorganize to create new margin, or cooperatively act with other units to exploit existing common pool resources and create new ones. The enumeration of the three classes of strategies to maintain margin of maneuver further explains how systems could reorganize themselves to remain resilient, and how they become brittle and fail. The influences on and interactions of each type of strategy are explored, and directions for future research to allow for better control of overall system margin, and hence resilience, are discussed

The Development of Resilience Management Guidelines to Protect Critical Infrastructures in Europe

The capability to be resilient in the face of crises and disasters is a topic of highest political concern in Europe especially as far as critical infrastructures and urban environments are concerned. Critical infrastructures are systems or part of systems essential for the maintenance of vital societal functions, the disruption or destruction of which would have a significant impact on the well-being of people. Examples of them are transportation services, energy infrastructures, water and wastewater systems, health and emergency services, financial services, communication infrastructures, etc. The symposium focuses on the experience of four different projects funded under the Horizon 2020 Programme: DARWIN, RESILIENS, RESOLUTE, SMR. The projects are all dealing with the application of resilience engineering, community resilience and urban resilience concepts to concrete examples of crises and situations of emergency. Such principles are translated into guidelines covering different resilience abilities that the organizations managing critical infrastructure should possess

The Development of Resilience Management Guidelines to Protect Critical Infrastructures in Europe

The capability to be resilient in the face of crises and disasters is a topic of highest political concern in Europe especially as far as critical infrastructures and urban environments are concerned. Critical infrastructures are systems or part of systems essential for the maintenance of vital societal functions, the disruption or destruction of which would have a significant impact on the well-being of people. Examples of them are transportation services, energy infrastructures, water and wastewater systems, health and emergency services, financial services, communication infrastructures, etc. The symposium focuses on the experience of four different projects funded under the Horizon 2020 Programme: DARWIN, RESILIENS, RESOLUTE, SMR. The projects are all dealing with the application of resilience engineering, community resilience and urban resilience concepts to concrete examples of crises and situations of emergency. Such principles are translated into guidelines covering different resilience abilities that the organizations managing critical infrastructure should possess

Resilience Management Guidelines for Critical Infrastructures, Practical Solutions Addressing Expected and Unexpected Events

Crises and disasters (Eyjafjallajökull and Deepwater Horizon 2010, Fukushima Daiichi 2011, and more recently the wildfire in Sweden 2018) have made it obvious that a more resilient approach to preparing for and dealing with such events is needed. This paper presents the results of the H2020 DARWIN project, which contributes to improving responses to expected and unexpected crises affecting critical infrastructures and social structures, whether man-made events (e.g. cyber-attacks) or natural events (e.g. earthquakes). The main result of the Darwin project is the creation of the DARWIN Resilience Management Guidelines (DRMG). The DRMG are evolving guidelines, designed to improve the ability of stakeholders to monitor, anticipate and learn from crises, and thereby allow them to adapt and respond more effectively and operate more efficiently during disasters. These guidelines are not prescriptive. Instead, they enable organizations to have a critical view of their own crisis management activities. The target beneficiaries of DARWIN are crisis management managers and practitioners responsible for public safety, such as critical infrastructures and service providers, which might be affected by a crisis, as well as the public and media. The DRMG are not meant to be dust-collectors on a shelf. To this end, they have been made into a variety of formats to support their evolution, ease of use and maintenance. Within this paper, the reader is introduced to the DRMG in its different formats, as well as a host of innovative tools (e.g. DRMG Wiki, serious gaming, training packages) developed by the project to support resilience management learning and the uptake of the guidelines. A multidisciplinary approach is applied, involving experts in the field of resilience, crisis and risk management, social media, and service providers in the air traffic management and healthcare domains. To ensure transnational, cross-sector applicability, long-term relevance and uptake of project results, the DARWIN Community of Practitioners (DCoP) has been established, with membership including experts and end users from different fields of expertise and from across multiple critical infrastructure domains. The DCoP has been involved in an iterative development and evaluation process to provide feedback on the results. The evaluation in pilot exercises and other activities involved 247 practitioners from 22 countries. The DCoP members contributed with knowledge and experience ensuring the feasibility of adapting them to other critical infrastructure domains. Our achievement is the current version of guidelines and associated innovative tools proposing practical interventions that end-users find useful. This paper includes testimonials of end-users within and outside the consortium. This document represents an invitation to explore the content of the guidelines, to encourage its use and further developments of the resilience management. Concluding Paper of the H2020 DARWIN Project as published 25 March 2019 on www.h2020darwin.e

Proceedings of the fourth Resilience Engineering Symposium

These proceedings document the various presentations at the Fourth Resilience Engineering Symposium held on June 8-10, 2011, in Sophia-Antipolis, France. The Symposium gathered participants from five continents and provided them with a forum to exchange experiences and problems, and to learn about Resilience Engineering from the latest scientific achievements to recent practical applications. The First Resilience Engineering Symposium was held in Söderköping, Sweden, on October 25-29 2004. The Second Resilience Engineering Symposium was held in Juan-les-Pins, France, on November 8-10 2006, The Third Resilience Engineering Symposium was held in Juan-les-Pins, France, on October 28-30 2008. Since the first Symposium, resilience engineering has fast become recognised as a valuable complement to the established approaches to safety. Both industry and academia have recognised that resilience engineering offers valuable conceptual and practical basis that can be used to attack the problems of interconnectedness and intractability of complex socio-technical systems. The concepts and principles of resilience engineering have been tested and refined by applications in such fields as air traffic management, offshore production, patient safety, and commercial fishing. Continued work has also made it clear that resilience is neither limited to handling threats and disturbances, nor confined to situations where something can go wrong. Today, resilience is understood as the intrinsic ability of a system to adjust its functioning prior to, during, or following changes and disturbances, so that it can sustain required operations under both expected and unexpected conditions. This definition emphasizes the ability to continue functioning, rather than simply to react and recover from disturbances and the ability to deal with diverse conditions of functioning, expected as well as unexpected. For anyone who is interested in learning more about Resilience Engineering, the books published in the Ashgate Studies in Resilience Engineering provide an excellent starting point. Another sign that Resilience Engineering is coming of age is the establishment of the Resilience Engineering Association. The goal of this association is to provide a forum for coordination and exchange of experiences, by bringing together researchers and professionals working in the Resilience Engineering domain and organisations applying or willing to apply Resilience Engineering principles in their operations. The Resilience Engineering Association held its first General Assembly during the Fourth Symposium, and will in the future play an active role in the organisation of symposia and other activities related to Resilience Engineering