Resilience in action
Introduction
Like strategy and crisis, resilience is a much over-used word. Yet, it is the
word that from its Latin roots (resilire) indicates a bouncing back or recoil
from distortion or adversity. Its significance has progressed from applications
in physics and engineering, through ecology and the environment, to today when
it is preceded with a wide range of adjectives such as personal,
organisational, societal, infrastructural, economic, national, etc.
While definitions also widely vary, the most succinct for the purpose of this
article is the ability to ‘anticipate, absorb and adapt to change’ –
essentially, to survive and thrive. This interpretation can include key
activities like foresight, preparation, response, recovery and regeneration. By
incorporating change, it means that bouncing back is an insufficient
description as the status quo ante cannot be realised. Rather, it is a case of
bouncing forward to a new or different state that, hopefully, will allow better
coping mechanisms for future distortions or adversities.
Learning lessons
Let’s see this interpretation in action. Perhaps the most pertinent example of
resilience in action today is Ukraine. The Ukrainian nation has shown
remarkable resistance and resilience in the face of devastating attacks on its
population and CI. Large parts of the CI has been destroyed. Bouncing back to
the ‘old’ Ukraine in no longer possible but the prospect of a ‘new’ Ukraine
emerging from the ashes is motivating.
In a recent Ukrainian book called How Nations are Reborn: The Experience of
East Asia, the author (Sergiy Korsunsky) draws on lessons of building
resilience and particularly from the Japanese who have come through a series of
national disasters affecting their CI, from bombing with atomic weapons,
meltdowns of nuclear-power plants, major earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons, to
bouncing forward to become a modern industrial state.[1]
The author makes three important points. The first is that the CI is worthless
unless communities return to use it. This statement reinforces the message that
resilience is ultimately about people. It is people who will generate recovery,
usually at ground level, and while having the right infrastructure is important
it cannot guarantee regeneration if people and communities feel unsafe. Interestingly,
evidence stemming from the earthquake and tsunami that struck Fukushima in 2011
showed conclusively that communities with deeper reservoirs of social capital
had higher survival rates and faster recovery times.[2] By way of contrast, an
earthquake in Christchurch in the same year saw a population loss in the
rebuilt main urban area: this resulted in the city dropping from being the
second-most populous area in New Zealand to third.
The next point is the importance of seizing the opportunity when it arises.
This reinforces the message of bouncing forward and the cliché ‘building back
better’. In the Ukrainians’ case, the rebuild is estimated to cost around
$411billion+ over a decade. It will be the largest reconstruction of civil
infrastructure in Europe since the Second World War. It will present
opportunities for transforming parts of the old system into more modern and
efficient ones, that will hopefully also have an improved level of redundancy
(spare capacity). Efficiency and redundancy can sometimes be uneasy bedfellows
and need to be reconciled; both are important in resilience.
The third point is that while money is important the real task is about
preparation and planning i.e. anticipation. It is about being proactively
protected.[3] The author makes the point that when the war concludes there will
be little time for planning so it needs to start now. Lessons learnt from
others can greatly help. In Japan, underground electrical substations are a
feature that could help Ukrainians avoid disruptions from drone attacks and
provide some redundancy. Water drawn from wells proved valuable after the Kobe
earthquake in 1995 when the water grid was severely disrupted, while fire foam
has been one way of using less water when hydrants are out: all lessons for
Ukraine. Such alternatives need to be considered early on and not in isolation
as cascading consequences can have a devastating impact on a wide range of
services.
Being agile
Preparation and planning for resilience apply across the board to any major
disruption. But resilience is not just for disasters or emergencies. It can
also apply in between the stresses and shocks. Yet, it still requires the
application of agility and adaptation to realise the opportunities.
Take the example of Canary Wharf in London. The Wharf is a massive
infrastructure estate built over the past three decades that, alongside the
City of London, constitutes one of the main financial centres in the UK and the
world. Finance is one of the UK’s designated 13 CI sectors. But change is upon
the area.
As hybrid working has reduced the occupancy for many clients, they are seeking
smaller footprints in other or modified buildings while undergoing
organisational change as a result. This means that Canary Wharf Management is
repurposing office space into residential dwellings.[4] Of the 2.4 million
square feet currently under construction, three quarters is now earmarked for
homes. In turn, this has introduced more shops and leisure facilities, making
it an increasingly popular destination, bringing fresh infrastructural demands.
A new, third rail connection to the island has, for instance, given both
inhabitants and visitors added resilience in travel options. Here is an example
of bouncing forward driven by change where both resilience and sustainability
combine.
Cause and effect
At the national level, the UK government’s Integrated Review and Resilience
Framework make much of resilience, including a re-examination of the national
risk assessment process as it applies to the CI.[5] The latest, unclassified
National Risk Register was published in August.[6]
Traditionally, risk has focused on the panoply of threats facing a company or
community measured against the vulnerabilities of those organisations.
Enterprise risk management (ERM) has largely been about the operationalisation
of risk registers, labelled in red, amber or green, with impact and likelihood
managed to the nth degree. This is a mechanistic, quantitative, and siloed
approach, and largely backwards facing based on historical probabilities.
However, the current period of rapid change means that many modern threats do
not have precedence, and certainly do not fit traditionally probabilistic
models. Just look at the frequency of flooding when a one-in-a-hundred-year
event can now be every few years in some places.
This means we should be analysing consequences and recovery (resilience) as
well as causes and vulnerabilities (risks). If we cannot forecast the next
major risk then at least we should prepare some generic solutions to deal with
the common consequences. Often, different risks can demand similar responses –
dealing with a flood or terrorist attack, for example, requires alternative
safe locations and compatible communication channels. Clearly, prevention is
better than cure when foreseen risks can be avoided or mitigated but with an
increasing number of unknown risks then there is little opportunity to have a
prevention plan for every emergency. Hence, the threat-agnostic, resilience
approach i.e. enterprise resilience management.
Resilient futures
The rapid advance of technology is sure to give resilience a push in a positive
direction. The expansion of AI, robotics and quantum technologies, for
instance, is significant not only individually but also as a combined set of
systems and derived services that support the socio-economic and
infrastructural necessities for the future of humankind and our environment.
This is even before the merger of infotech and biotech takes us to a whole new
level.
But in the final analysis, it is the shocks and stresses on people and
communities that will be felt acutely. The so-called ‘resilience dividend’ will
need to focus on ways to help alleviate those stresses at the local level,
while combining measures to mitigate the shocks and reimagine new
circumstances. Those measures need to be transferred from top to bottom yet
actioned from bottom to top. Resilience must marry with sustainability for us
to endure and build a brighter, more resilient future.
Building Resilient Futures is available in paperback or e-format from Austin
Macauley Publishers Ltd (ISBN 9781035812622). The author, Robert Hall, is
currently writing a sequel looking at Natural Resilience: How the natural world
can help us understand the key elements of resilience.
References:
1. The Economist, 10 June 2023.
2. Aldrich, D P. (2012) Social Capital in Post Disaster
Recovery: Towards a Resilient and Compassionate East Asian Community, in
Sawada, Y. and S. Oum (eds.), Economic and Welfare Impacts of Disasters in East
Asia and Policy Responses. ERIA Research Project Report 2011–8, Jakarta: ERIA.
pp.157–178.
3. UNDRR (2023), How to make infrastructure resilient: The
Handbook for Implementing the Principles for Resilient Infrastructure, United
Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).
4. The Times, 1 July 2023.
5. The UK’s Integrated Review Refresh (13 March 2023) and the
UK Government Resilience Framework (19 December 2022).
6. National Risk Register 2023 (3 August 2023).
This article first appeared in Critical Infrastructure Protection & Resilience News | Summer 2023.
See: https://cip-association.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/CIPRNews-Summer2023.pdf
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