Dr. Thomas P Seager, Dr. Susan Spierre Clark, Daniel A EisenbergArizona State University, Tempe AZ

23 July 2015I-10 bridge collapse costing trucking industry $2.5 million/day.

A Socio-technical Approach to Resilience in Critical Infrastructure Systems

(photo Matt York / Associated Press)

@seagertp#resweek2015

18 Aug 2015 Philadelphia PA

Photo: Indiana Department of Transportation

Northbound I-65 from Lebanon to Lafayette IN closed since 7 Aug, when the center bridge pier sunk 9 inches.

Dr. Jeryang Park, Dr. P Suresh C RaoCivil Engineering, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN

Barriers to Building Resilient Infrastructure Systems1. Lack of understanding of what constitutes resilience.2. Interdependence of complex infrastructure systems obscures

understanding of those systems.3. Incentive and governance structures present obstacles, even where

understanding is sufficient.4. Resilience require socio-technical knowledge integration.

Create a pluralistic, multi-disciplinary understanding of resilience.

1. Lack of understanding of what constitutes resilience.

The Objectification of Risk

Resilience is better understood as a series of interacting processes than a property of state.

More like a verb, and less like a noun.

new system stresses are incorporated into current understanding.

foresee possibilities

response taken after information from sensing and anticipation areincorporated into understanding.

Learning is the process by which new knowledgeis created and maintained by observation of past actions

Decode System Inter-dependencies

2. Interdependence of complex infrastructure systems obscures understanding of those systems.

Heavy rains in August 2005 overtopped a massive culvert carrying the flow of Black Creek beneath Finch Ave in Toronto ONT.

In 2003 drought disabled more than 30 European nuclear power plants

High water temperatures in the South constrained power supply in 2007, raising electricity prices

Drought in the Pacific Northwest crippled hydroelectric power in 2001

$3-6billion in damages

M Bartos and M Chester, 2015, Impacts of climate change on electric power supply in the Western United States, Nature Climate Change, doi: 10.1038/nclimate2648.

3. Incentive and governance structures present obstacles, even where understanding is sufficient.

Build Anti-Fragile Governance Structures

ROBUSTNESS ANTI-FRAGILITY

4. Resilience require socio-technical knowledge integration.

Simulate Resilience Crises

Institutional ResilienceInfrastructure Resilience

Engineering Sustainability Political Science Social Science

30 Jul

26 Sep

27 Oct

Summer 2014

ACTORS RULES

POLICIES NORMS

INSTITUTIONAL ASSESSMENT

Resilience requires new patterns of improvisational and adaptive thinking in design and

operation of infrastructure systems that can be enhanced

through practice with ‘surprise’ experiences in a simulated

complex network environment.

HypothesisBehavioral contributions to resilience will improve as a

result of simulated experiences.

1927 Mississippi River Flood

Finding the positive case studies

1993 Mississippi River Flood

2011 Mississippi River Flood

Adaptation

9 Sep 2014

• 8 Sep 2014

17 Sep 2014

Non-stationarity: The future is no longer an extrapolation of the past.

from fail-safe to safe-fail

from reduction to incompleteness

from definition to ambiguity

from specification to emergence

from reliability to recovery

from centralized to distributed

from probabilistic to possibilistic

Further reading

This presentation is partially supported by NSF Grants 1140190 & 1441352 and includes contributions by @mikhailchester, @clarkamiller & Igor Linkov.