Resilience
Ten essential insights for resilience
What really matters in creating a shift towards more resilient infrastructure?
THE Resilience Shift, a venture between Lloyd’s Register Foundation and Arup, has identified 10 insights to what really matters in creating a shift towards more resilient infrastructure. We know what resilience looks like – the characteristics of resilient systems such as redundancy, resourcefulness and flexibility. These insights are about what matters to create a shift in practice. The insights can be looked at in three main stages:
- The shared vision of what matters; safe, sustainable and resilient infrastructure.
- The shift we want to see; managing deep uncertainty, overcoming fragmented governance, whole system thinking, better use of technology, and embracing outcome-led approaches.
- How we will get there; engaging the whole value chain, articulating the value, sharing knowledge, and providing the guidance, tools and standards.
The shared vision of what matters
1. Safe, sustainable and resilient
Becoming safer, resilient and more sustainable means focusing on holistic solutions that will enhance safety, are resilient to known and unknown hazards, and align with the principles of sustainable development, for example in terms of resource use and emissions.
Whilst many different people are interested in resilience, they are often coming to it from different routes. There are solutions that can enhance safety and resilience, such as those employed in safety-critical industries, that are not driven by sustainable development principles. Conversely, focusing on the long-term outcomes for the planet and society, does not automatically enhance the safety of our infrastructure systems today. At the Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s international conference in 2019, a representative from the UK’s Health and Safety Executive noted that safety pioneers don’t yet have a Greta Thunberg equivalent, which left the feeling that the two issues are in conflict. There is a sweet spot, and some compelling case studies (ICRG India, Washington, Itaipu Dam) demonstrate that all three can be delivered. These are the interventions that we should be promoting.
The climate crisis is one of the most visible entry points to the need for resilient infrastructure, and we should be promoting solutions that not only enhance resilience to the effects of climate change, but also do not contribute further to its causes – blue-green infrastructure rather than ‘grey’, and all forms of nature-based solutions.
The shift we want to see
2. Managing deep uncertainty
Resilience encompasses the need to mitigate those risks we know about, but also to be able to respond to and recover from those that we can’t predict or avoid. With climate change increasing the potential for tipping points, alongside increasing systemic complexity and vulnerabilities, we are learning that the past is no longer a good predictor of the future.
There is a need for dynamic, resilience-based design approaches, that are a response to deep uncertainty. We have learnt that emphasising the importance of recognising and managing deep uncertainty is a clearer and higher-level way to articulate these concepts. Deep uncertainty underpins the move from traditional risk management to resilience. In order to model and mitigate risks, they need to be able to be assessed and modelled.
This is not always the case in our complex and uncertain future. It is really important to articulate this clearly for practitioners, from government to finance to design, operation and management. Using stories and case studies to support it can help to transfer some of the theory into practice – deep uncertainty can be a difficult concept to communicate.
3. Fragmented governance
Fragmented governance relates closely to whole system thinking, but merits its own section because it is a specific, tangible, barrier to a system being resilient, particularly in times of chronic stress or acute shock.
The importance of overcoming fragmented governance is raised in the National Infrastructure Commission’s (2019) Resilience Scoping Study. Whether it is a simulated crisis or a real one, as in Cape Town: Day Zero, we have learned that shared scenarios can highlight where fragmentation exists.
4. Whole system thinking
Encouraging whole systems thinking means looking beyond the boundaries of any system where external factors may also have a negative impact on its function. Resilience needs the whole system to function, not just individual assets within the system. This means thinking about not only different technical components of interconnected systems, but the humans in the system, the decisions they take and its natural environment. For example, this thinking takes into account the complex nature of a multi-modal transportation system rather than simply a road network.
‘Safe failure’ of individual assets may be acceptable when a whole system approach is taken. Investment decisions are typically made for individual assets, which is a barrier to taking a wider view that the loss of one asset may be acceptable in the short term for the continued function of the overall system. The Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment (CCRI) identifies that the role of an asset within national system level policies is relevant, as well as the resilience of the asset itself. One challenge is that very few organisations have a remit to take a whole system view. Boundaries are there for a reason, and more work is needed to demonstrate the value of a whole systems approach for everyone, not only for the end users of a system.
5. Technology that enhances, rather than compromises, resilience
In adopting digital technologies in infrastructure systems it is essential to consider the broadest possible impacts to ensure that new vulnerabilities are not created.
Technological or ‘smart’ solutions are visible in every aspect of critical infrastructure, from how organisations monitor and manage their assets, to how those responsible in an emergency event communicate with each other. Our ‘lens’ for talking about technology should be to emphasise the importance of whole systems thinking and interdependencies in planning technological interventions. Often the driver behind the adoption of technology is not resilience, but efficiency, productivity or safety. It is essential to ensure that these solutions do not inadvertently create new vulnerabilities through, for example, increasing tight coupling and that we do not create problems for future generations as we introduce ever more digital solutions into our infrastructure systems. Clever use of data and technology during a crisis is critically important, particularly in providing real-time situation analysis.
6. Outcome-led approaches
Focusing on outcome-led approaches – thinking about what the system does, not what it is – will create the shift in practice that is needed for an increased focus on outcome-led design, or performance-based design.
Looping back to the previous insight around whole system thinking, one of the important shifts in thinking for resilience is to consider the ability of the system to continue to function, rather than preventing failure of individual components within a system. This can be described as the need to focus on what the system is for, not what it is. Traditional engineering design is typically reductionist, focusing on individual elements, and designing these for fixed thresholds. However, there is a movement now towards outcome-led, or performance-based, design which shifts thinking towards the ultimate goals for society, the environment or the economy. Outcome-led approaches are not new, but they are still emerging as a concept for infrastructure provision.
How we will get there
7. Engage the whole value chain
Increased resilience at every step of the value chain clearly shows what matters to whom, and that resilience is important to everyone, but for different reasons. It also helps us to focus when communicating the importance of resilience, on the resilience value for any particular audience group.
8. Articulate the value of resilience
Demonstrating the value of resilience through improved safety and environmental benefits, along with positive outcomes for communities and the wider economy, will help to underline the importance of long-term, holistic investment in resilience.
Building on the value chain concept, we need to do more than simply talk about the value at a high level for those who are planning, financing, designing, delivering and operating critical infrastructure. More work is needed to clearly demonstrate this value, through evidence, modelling, scenarios, and other tools and approaches.
There is emerging recognition of the importance of resilience (particularly to climate change) by those who are investing in infrastructure. The EBRD, for example, launched the first $700m resilience bond in 2019. A better understanding of the risks to investments related to the changing climate is essential in order to unlock funding for more resilient infrastructure. In parallel with understanding these risks, a robust demonstration of the value of sustainable and resilient infrastructure is essential, because simply driving investment away from infrastructure, or away from the most vulnerable countries, is not a desired outcome.
Any articulation of resilience value needs to recognise deep uncertainty, and in fact, deep uncertainty is one reason why traditional cost-benefit analyses are not helpful in demonstrating the value of resilient solutions. ‘Threat agnostic’ investments can be demonstrated, through scenario modelling for example, to meet a ‘no regrets’ criteria. The recent launch of the City Finance Gap Fund aims to bring resilience into funding decisions for infrastructure projects by clearly capturing this value early in the decision-making and project specification process.
9. Transfer knowledge between sectors
There are many benefits to sharing lessons widely between sectors and countries, not least that we avoid reinventing the wheel as we move more deeply into other sectors, which should help us achieve impact more quickly. More importantly, we know that a common understanding, of what matters for resilience, within and between sectors, is important for whole system thinking.
If every sector and every country approaches its resilience challenges in isolation, then fragmentation will continue to be a barrier. The 2017-2018 water crisis in Cape Town led to the creation of Cape Town Day Zero learning resources. Although emerging from a water crisis, these are lessons for all those dealing with resilience challenges across many sectors and different scenarios. Similarly the COVID-19 crisis is demonstrating how interconnected our infrastructure is with the humans in the systems, and that a cross-sector response is required.
10. Guidance and standards
Guidance and standards are urgently needed to put resilience into practice. There is a value proposition for curating standards, ratings and guidance and clearly articulating who these are for, and how they will help.
This insight is intentionally described last, because the preceding nine insights need to be defined, articulated, and demonstrated to create the ‘right’ guidance and standards, and to understand the motivations of end users.
From the early days of The Resilience Shift it has been clear that guidance and standards are urgently needed to put resilience into practice. On the other hand, we have learned that a lot exist already, whether the ISO standards for organisational resilience and city resilience (in preparation) or voluntary rating tools from REDi (highly analytical and quantitative) to the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure rating tool resilience module.
Building on the work we have done in tools and approaches, we believe there is a value proposition for curating standards, ratings and guidance and clearly articulating who these are for, and how they will help.
Dr Juliet Mian, Technical Director, The Resilience Shift
www.resilienceshift.org @resilienceshift
