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Resilience is used to describe a burgeoning movement among entities such as communities, businesses, and governments to improve their ability to respond to and quickly recover from catastrophic events such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Resilience is an important part of strategies for managing Global catastrophic risks. It has been defined as"the positive ability of a system or company to adapt itself to the consequences of a catastrophic failure.”
Strategies such as decentralization of resources such as the food supply and energy are important components of Civilizational resilience. Resilience and decentralization are important in responding effectively to a variety of global catastrophic risks, including Pandemics, disasters caused by Global warming, or Cyber war.
Some have identified the four facets of resilience as preparedness, protection, response and recovery. IEET Fellow Jamais Cascio expands on this and lists as key components of resilience: diversity (not having a single point of failure), redundancy, decentralization, collaboration, Transparency, fail gracefully, flexibility, and foresight.
One of the earliest uses of the term in a U.S. security context was by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Stephen Flynn in the book America the Vulnerable: How Our Government is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism. Dr. Flynn argued that America’s critical infrastructure – including bridges, tunnels, electrical grids, ports, chemical plants, and water systems – represents a key potential target to terrorists because a strike that impaired the infrastructure could severely disrupt important social and economic activity in the country. Making U.S. infrastructure more resilient was a key recommendation. With some 90% of U.S. critical infrastructure in private hands, such an emphasis will require strong public-private cooperation.
Growing Support
The concept is gaining credence among public and private sector leaders who argue that resilience should be given equal weight to preventing terrorist attacks in U.S. homeland security policy. Many experts and leaders see resilience as a vital component to a comprehensive homeland security strategy. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that not all catastrophic events can be prevented and a focus on response and recovery is needed.
Prominent members in Congress are embracing resilience. The Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee of the House of Representatives, Bennie Thompson (D-MS) declared May 2008"Resilience Month” as the committee and its subcommittees held a series of hearings to examine the issue. President Obama and the Department of Homeland Security have also made resilience an integral component of homeland security policy.
Particularly in light of the global financial meltdown, more scholarship is now turning towards examining how to achieve resilience.
Business organizations such as the Council on Competitiveness have embraced resilience and have tied economic competitiveness to security. The Reform Institute has highlighted the need to enhance the resilience of the supply chain and electrical grid against disruptions that could cripple the U.S. economy. Many corporations are adopting resilience and business continuity initiatives and sharing best practices.
IEET Links:
Resilience in the Face of Crisis: Why the Future will be Flexible
The Next Big Thing: Resilience
Sources:
Resilience and the Next Disaster
Wikipedia