Integrating Risk and Resilience Approaches to Catastrophe Management in Engineering Systems
TL;DR: Management of the 2011 flooding in the Mississippi River Basin is discussed as an example of the successes and challenges of resilience-based management of complex natural systems that have been extensively altered by engineered structures.
Abstract: Recent natural and man-made catastrophes, such as the Fukushima nuclear power plant, flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Haiti earthquake, and the mortgage derivatives crisis, have renewed interest in the concept of resilience, especially as it relates to complex systems vulnerable to multiple or cascading failures. Although the meaning of resilience is contested in different contexts, in general resilience is understood to mean the capacity to adapt to changing conditions without catastrophic loss of form or function. In the context of engineering systems, this has sometimes been interpreted as the probability that system conditions might exceed an irrevocable tipping point. However, we argue that this approach improperly conflates resilience and risk perspectives by expressing resilience exclusively in risk terms. In contrast, we describe resilience as an emergent property of what an engineering system does, rather than a static property the system has. Therefore, resilience cannot be measured at the systems scale solely from examination of component parts. Instead, resilience is better understood as the outcome of a recursive process that includes: sensing, anticipation, learning, and adaptation. In this approach, resilience analysis can be understood as differentiable from, but complementary to, risk analysis, with important implications for the adaptive management of complex, coupled engineering systems. Management of the 2011 flooding in the Mississippi River Basin is discussed as an example of the successes and challenges of resilience-based management of complex natural systems that have been extensively altered by engineered structures.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: This paper presents a review of recent research articles related to defining and quantifying resilience in various disciplines, with a focus on engineering systems and provides a classification scheme to the approaches, focusing on qualitative and quantitative approaches and their subcategories.
1,072 citations
17 Dec 2010
TL;DR: The authors survey the vast terrain of "culturomics", focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000, using a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed.
Abstract: L'article, publie dans Science, sur une des premieres utilisations analytiques de Google Books, fondee sur les n-grammes (Google Ngrams) We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of "culturomics", focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can ...
735 citations
United States Army Corps of Engineers1, ETH Zurich2, University of Virginia3, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research4, Laval University5, University of Waterloo6, École Centrale Paris7, University of Stuttgart8, Fraunhofer Society9, Hamburg University of Technology10, Free University of Berlin11, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences12
TL;DR: Resilience management goes beyond risk management to address the complexities of large integrated systems and the uncertainty of future threats, especially those associated with climate change as mentioned in this paper, which is a common theme in our work.
Abstract: Resilience management goes beyond risk management to address the complexities of large integrated systems and the uncertainty of future threats, especially those associated with climate change.
508 citations
TL;DR: Methods for valuation and benefit-cost analysis based on concepts from risk analysis and management are provided that meet a set of requirements with clear relationships to the metrics of the relevant abstract notions of reliability and risk.
Abstract: The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction reported that the 2011 natural disasters, including the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, resulted in $366 billion in direct damages and 29,782 fatalities worldwide. Storms and floods accounted for up to 70% of the 302 natural disasters worldwide in 2011, with earthquakes producing the greatest number of fatalities. Average annual losses in the United States amount to about $55 billion. Enhancing community and system resilience could lead to massive savings through risk reduction and expeditious recovery. The rational management of such reduction and recovery is facilitated by an appropriate definition of resilience and associated metrics. In this article, a resilience definition is provided that meets a set of requirements with clear relationships to the metrics of the relevant abstract notions of reliability and risk. Those metrics also meet logically consistent requirements drawn from measure theory, and provide a sound basis for the development of effective decision-making tools for multihazard environments. Improving the resiliency of a system to meet target levels requires the examination of system enhancement alternatives in economic terms, within a decision-making framework. Relevant decision analysis methods would typically require the examination of resilience based on its valuation by society at large. The article provides methods for valuation and benefit-cost analysis based on concepts from risk analysis and management.
413 citations
Cites background from "Integrating Risk and Resilience App..."
...The model of Equation (20) also meets the monotone conditions of Equations (6)–(13) by having the following attributes: Re : ( f ∩ r) ∈ C → [0,∞), (24) Re(φ) = 0....
[...]
..., building on the relevant metrics of reliability and risk; and (10) Enabling the development of resilience metrics with meaningful units....
[...]
...(13) Functions μ that satisfy Equations (10), (11), and either Equations (12) or (13) are called semicontinuous from below and from above, respectively....
[...]
...Functions μ that satisfy Equations (10), (11), and either Equations (12) or (13) are called semicontinuous from below and from above, respectively....
[...]
...(10) The model requires input with meaningful units, is unit-consistent, and produces results with meaningful units....
[...]
TL;DR: Implementations of three generalized management frameworks for organizing sustainability and resilience were found to have common goals of providing benefits to people and the environment under normal and extreme operating conditions, with the best examples building on similarities and minimizing conflicts between resilience and sustainability.
306 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: The traditional view of natural systems, therefore, might well be less a meaningful reality than a perceptual convenience.
Abstract: Individuals die, populations disappear, and species become extinct. That is one view of the world. But another view of the world concentrates not so much on presence or absence as upon the numbers of organisms and the degree of constancy of their numbers. These are two very different ways of viewing the behavior of systems and the usefulness of the view depends very much on the properties of the system concerned. If we are examining a particular device designed by the engineer to perform specific tasks under a rather narrow range of predictable external conditions, we are likely to be more concerned with consistent nonvariable performance in which slight departures from the performance goal are immediately counteracted. A quantitative view of the behavior of the system is, therefore, essential. With attention focused upon achieving constancy, the critical events seem to be the amplitude and frequency of oscillations. But if we are dealing with a system profoundly affected by changes external to it, and continually confronted by the unexpected, the constancy of its behavior becomes less important than the persistence of the relationships. Attention shifts, therefore, to the qualitative and to questions of existence or not. Our traditions of analysis in theoretical and empirical ecology have been largely inherited from developments in classical physics and its applied variants. Inevitably, there has been a tendency to emphasize the quantitative rather than the qualitative, for it is important in this tradition to know not just that a quantity is larger than another quantity, but precisely how much larger. It is similarly important, if a quantity fluctuates, to know its amplitude and period of fluctuation. But this orientation may simply reflect an analytic approach developed in one area because it was useful and then transferred to another where it may not be. Our traditional view of natural systems, therefore, might well be less a meaningful reality than a perceptual convenience. There can in some years be more owls and fewer mice and in others, the reverse. Fish populations wax and wane as a natural condition, and insect populations can range over extremes that only logarithmic
13,447 citations
"Integrating Risk and Resilience App..." refers background in this paper
...However, Holling also acknowledged the limitations of the physics metaphor as being too simplistic for systems ecology....
[...]
...Third, Holling claimed that management for resilience requires “the need to keep options open, the need to view events in a regional rather than a local context, and the need to emphasize heterogeneity....
[...]
...Holling’s seminal work catalyzed a rapid growth in use of the term “resilience” in new contexts....
[...]
...Three aspects of Holling’s understanding of resilience stand out....
[...]
...Resilience approaches—as suggested by Holling(2)—require preparing for the unexpected, whereas risk analysis proceeds from the premise that hazards are identifiable....
[...]
TL;DR: The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems as discussed by the authors, whereas science has developed to deal with tame problems.
Abstract: The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems. They are “wicked” problems, whereas science has developed to deal with “tame” problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about “optimal solutions” to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no “solutions” in the sense of definitive and objective answers.
13,262 citations
"Integrating Risk and Resilience App..." refers background in this paper
..., wicked problems(23)), (2) optimization of engineering systems exclusively for identified factors, while ignoring the potential significance of unidentified factors or emergent threats by assumption or because of cost constraints (i....
[...]
TL;DR: In this article, Naiman et al. pointed out that harnessing of streams and rivers comes at great cost: Many rivers no longer support socially valued native species or sustain healthy ecosystems that provide important goods and services.
Abstract: H umans have long been fascinated by the dynamism of free-flowing waters. Yet we have expended great effort to tame rivers for transportation, water supply, flood control, agriculture, and power generation. It is now recognized that harnessing of streams and rivers comes at great cost: Many rivers no longer support socially valued native species or sustain healthy ecosystems that provide important goods and services (Naiman et al. 1995, NRC 1992).
5,799 citations
[...]
TL;DR: It seems appropriate to assign the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the present, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch, supplementing the Holocene—the warm period of the past 10–12 millennia.
Abstract: For the past three centuries, the effects of humans on the global environment have escalated. Because of these anthro-pogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, global climate may depart significantly from natural behaviour for many millennia to come. It seems appropriate to assign the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the present, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch, supplementing the Holocene—the warm period of the past 10–12 millennia.
3,200 citations
TL;DR: This work surveys the vast terrain of ‘culturomics,’ focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000, and shows how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology and the pursuit of fame.
Abstract: We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of 'culturomics,' focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. Culturomics extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.
2,257 citations