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Loosely defined, resilience is the capacity of a system—be it an individual, a forest, a city, or an economy—to deal with change and continue to develop. It is both about withstanding shocks and disturbances (like climate change or financial crisis) and using such events to catalyze renewal, novelty, and innovation. In human systems, resilience thinking emphasizes learning and social diversity. And at the level of the biosphere, it focuses on the interdependence of people and nature, the dynamic interplay of slow and gradual change. Resilience, above all, is about turning crisis into opportunity.

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_resilience/

As such the rules outlined by Simon Levin, Professor of biology and ecology at Princeton, for addressing resilience in this later state I think are a better point of departure for a more holistic view of resilience. He outlines 8 many of which will seem counter intuitive to policy makers brought up in an era of “fail safe” (a term credited to Wohlstetter at RAND for defining an approach to avoiding nuclear catastrophe). They are:

  1. reduce uncertainty,
  2. expect surprise,
  3. maintain heterogeneity,
  4. sustain modularity,
  5. preserve redundancy,
  6. tighten feedback loops,
  7. build trust
  8. do unto others (I wonder whether this ought be “tit for tat” or the golden rule - do unto others as you would have them do on to you, or do unto others as they do unto you)

http://ilabra.org/blog/why-resilience-term-worth-preserving

  • resilients/resilience.1334236706.txt.gz
  • Last modified: 2012-04-12 13:18
  • by nik