Resilience has become a central concept in government policy understandings over the last decade. In our complex, global and interconnected world, resilience appears to be the policy ‘buzzword’ of choice, alleged to be the solution to a wide and ever-growing range of policy issues. This book analyses the key aspects of resilience-thinking and highlights how resilience impacts upon traditional conceptions of governance. This concise and accessible book investigates how resilience-thinking adds new insights into how politics (both domestically and internationally) is understood to work and how problems are perceived and addressed; from educational training in schools to global ethics and from responses to shock events and natural disasters to long-term international policies to promote peace and development. This book also raises searching questions about how resilience-thinking influences the types of knowledge and understanding we value and challenges traditional conceptions of social and political processes. It sets forward a new and clear conceptualisation of resilience, of use to students, academics and policy-makers, emphasising the links between the rise of resilience and awareness of the complex nature of problems and policy-making.

One common characteristics of a complex system is its ability to withstand major disturbances and the capacity to rebuild itself. Understanding how such systems demonstrate resilience by absorbing or recovering from major external perturbations requires both quantitative foundations and a multidisciplinary view on the topic. This book demonstrates how new methods can be used to identify the actions favouring the recovery from perturbations. Examples discussed include bacterial biofilms resisting detachment, grassland savannahs recovering from fire, the dynamics of language competition and Internet social networking sites overcoming vandalism. The reader is taken through an introduction to the idea of resilience and viability and shown the mathematical basis of the techniques used to analyse systems. The idea of individual or agent-based modelling of complex systems is introduced and related to analytically tractable approximations of such models. A set of case studies illustrates the use of the techniques in real applications, and the final section describes how one can use new and elaborate software tools for carrying out the necessary calculations. The book is intended for a general scientific audience of readers from the natural and social sciences, yet requires some mathematics to gain a full understanding of the more theoretical chapters. It is an essential point of reference for those interested in the practical application of the concepts of resilience and viability

Scientists and researchers concerned with the behavior of large ecosystems have focused in recent years on the concept of "resilience." Traditional perspectives held that ecological systems exist close to a steady state and resilience is the ability of the system to return rapidly to that state following perturbation. However beginning with the work of C. S. Holling in the early 1970s, researchers began to look at conditions far from the steady state where instabilities can cause a system to shift into an entirely different regime of behavior, and where resilience is measured by the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system is restructured. Resilience and the Behavior of Large-Scale Systems examines theories of resilience and change, offering readers a thorough understanding of how the properties of ecological resilience and human adaptability interact in complex, regional-scale systems. The book addresses the theoretical concepts of resilience and stability in large-scale ecosystems as well as the empirical application of those concepts in a diverse set of cases. In addition, it discusses the practical implications of the new theoretical approaches and their role in the sustainability of human-modified ecosystems. The book begins with a review of key properties of complex adaptive systems that contribute to overall resilience, including multiple equlibria, complexity, self-organization at multiple scales, and order; it also presents a set of mathematical metaphors to describe and deepen the reader's understanding of the ideas being discussed. Following the introduction are case studies that explore the biophysical dimensions of resilience in both terrestrial and aquatic systems and evaluate the propositions presented in the introductory chapters. The book concludes with a synthesis section that revisits propositions in light of the case studies, while an appendix presents a detailed account of the relationship between return times for a disturbed system and its resilienc. In addition to the editors, contributors include Stephen R. Carpenter, Carl Folke, C. S. Holling, Bengt-Owe Jansson, Donald Ludwig, Ariel Lugo, Tim R. McClanahan, Garry D. Peterson, and Brian H. Walker.

With all likelihood high complexity is the most evident and dramatic characteristic of not just the economy; it is also the hallmark of our lives. In a complex economy conventional risk management, risk rating and business intelligence technologies are becoming dangerously outdated. The tools and solutions presented in this book have been architectured specifically for turbulence and for a complex economy dominated by shocks, destabilizing events and instability. In particular, the book proposes a new rating model based on resilience, the capacity to withstand such shocks, beyond the increasingly irrelevant but still popular idea of Probability of Default (PoD). Moreover, it is shown how in an interconnected economy rating single companies provides little insight as to its state of health and sustainability and how large-scale systemic analyses of ecosystems of corporations can provide new knowledge and new insights for the global investor. Finally, new approaches to asset allocation and portfolio design based on complexity and resilience are introduced.

This book introduces a new approach to environmental sociology, by integrating complexity-informed social science, Marxian ecological theory, and resilience-based human ecology. It argues that sociologists have largely ignored developments in ecology which move beyond functionalist approaches to systems analysis, and as a result, environmental sociology has failed to capitalise not only on the analytical promise of resilience ecology, but on complementary developments in complexity theory. By tracing the origins and discussing current developments in each of these areas, it offers several paths to interdisciplinary dialogue. Eoin Flaherty argues that complexity theory and Marxian ecology can enhance our understanding of the social aspect of social-ecological systems, whilst a resilience approach can sharpen the analytical power of environmental sociology.

Engineering within Ecological Constraints presents a rare dialogue between engineers and environmental scientists as they consider the many technical as well as social and legal challenges of ecologically sensitive engineering. The volume looks at the concepts of scale, resilience, and chaos as they apply to the points where the ecological life support system of nature interacts with the technological life support system created by humankind. Among the questions addressed are: What are the implications of differences between ecological and engineering concepts of efficiency and stability? How can engineering solutions to immediate problems be made compatible with long-term ecological concerns? How can we transfer ecological principles to economic systems? The book also includes important case studies on such topics as water management in southern Florida and California and oil exploration in rain forests. From its conceptual discussions to the practical experience reflected in case studies, this volume will be important to policymakers, practitioners, researchers, educators, and students in the fields of engineering, environmental science, and environmental policy.

Discover how to transform stress and other unwanted states into resilience, clarity, and improved wellbeing with this insightful new book Resilience By Design: How to Survive and Thrive in a Complex and Turbulent World delivers the world’s most detailed and research-backed how-to manual to integrate advances from neuroscience and complexity theory with real world expertise, providing practical techniques that you'll want to use every day. Alongside well explained scientific theory, each chapter contains dramatic, real-life stories of people from frontline services, elite sports, and everyday survivors who learned to thrive in high pressure, demanding, and often deadly situations. You'll discover how resilience isn’t just the ability to tough it out; it's dependent upon an interconnected set of skills, techniques, creative processes, and new understandings of how we think, act, and interact with our environments and each other. If you or someone you care about experiences unwanted stress, anxiety, decision fatigue, overwhelm, or burnout, by applying the step-by-step techniques in this book, you'll learn to develop resilience, clarity, improved energy, wellbeing, and overall performance. You'll also learn: There's no such thing as an inherently stressful situation, workplace, or event. How to appreciate and benefit from the hidden information in your unconscious signals and intuitions How to adapt your decision making to meet the challenges of uncertainty, from the complicated and complex, to the outright chaotic When to define your limits and 'line in the sand' so that you never expose yourself to unmanageable risk or potential burnout What is it to, 'Know Thyself', through techniques that change perspective and bring clarity even in uncertain, turbulent times Techniques that can be easily taught to people you care about Lifelong resilience and being at your best is available to each of us, no matter what life throws at you. Resilience By Design was derived from the experiences of hundreds of people on the frontline of emergency services, defense, Olympic level sports, business, art, science, and many other areas of expertise—from firefighters and paramedics to social workers and athletes. This book is written for students and teachers, parents and children, caregivers and patients, athletes and coaches, managers and employees, entrepreneurs, and fortune 500 CEOs, and anyone who wishes to know how to survive and thrive in an ever more complex and turbulent world.