INCOSE Webinar – Architecting Resilient Systems

Webinar 15:00 UTC: Architecting Resilient Systems
December 16, 2009
Presenter: Scott Jackson

The concept of resilience has reached maturity over the past decade. There is general agreement on the definition of resilience and its attributes. The Resilience Engineering Network (www.resilience-engineering.org) has pioneered this work. Authors, such as Erik Hollnagel and David Woods have written extensively on the subject. The book Resilience Engineering: Concepts and Precepts, Ashgate Publishing Company, UK, 2006 is one of the first major publications. The IEEE Systems Journal has devoted a whole issue to the subject. The University of Southern California (USC) teaches a graduate course called Architecting Resilient Systems in which the book of the same name by the presenter is used.

The resilience community agrees that resilience architecting (also called resilience engineering) occurs over the three phases of a disruption. In the pre-disruption phase the system should take steps to anticipate the disruption and avoid the disruption, if possible. In the survival phase the system should absorb the disruption so that it can recover in the recovery phase. In the recovery phase the system resumes some degree of its original goals, including the survival of the humans in it…

One of the most important resilience attributes is inter-element collaboration. This attribute allows all elements of the system to interact and cooperate with each other. The New York Fire Department had excellent collaboration with the police, the military and the power company after the twin tower attacks. On the other hand, the City of New Orleans lacked this attribute after Katrina. This lack of resilience is called brittleness…

via INCOSE – Event Calendar Details – Webinar: Architecting Resilient Systems