Understanding and enhancing future infrastructure resiliency: a socio-ecological approach

Area of Science:

• Socio-ecological systems analysis
• Infrastructure resilience engineering
• Adaptive capacity studies

Background:

• System resilience is defined by adaptive capacity to long-term socio-ecological change.
• Current infrastructure planning often adopts a short-term, stable system (STSS) perspective.
• This STSS view limits understanding of long-term adaptation for resilience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and problematize the prevalent STSS perspective on infrastructure resilience.
• To challenge the prevailing short-term focus in resilience planning.
• To enhance understanding of future infrastructure system capacities for adaptation.

Main Methods:

• Development of a heuristic 'scenario-episode' tool.
• Application of the tool within the context of United Kingdom infrastructure resilience.
• Analysis of adaptive notions of resilience versus STSS perspective.

Main Results:

• The study highlights a gap between adaptive resilience concepts and current infrastructure policy.
• The heuristic tool aims to address and challenge the STSS perspective.
• Practitioners' comprehension of long-term system adaptation is found to be limited.

Conclusions:

• Moving beyond STSS is crucial for effective long-term infrastructure resilience.
• The 'scenario-episode' tool offers a method to foster adaptive resilience thinking.
• Improved understanding of adaptive capacities is vital for future threat response.