Towards Formalization and Operationalization of Resilience

Abstract

Resilience can be understood as the intrinsic ability of a system to adapt its functioning prior to, during, or following changes and disturbances, so that it can sustain required operations and performance under both expected and unexpected conditions. The need to explore the concept of resilience, in the context of socio-technical systems, is widely acknowledged in literature and industry. Nevertheless, this research topic is still relatively unexplored and no formal definition and metrics for resilience exists. It is encouraged by the current state of research, to develop a better understanding of mechanisms present in socio-technical systems that underlie the ability to be resilient. One of the resilience mechanisms identified is the mechanism of anticipation. Anticipation reflects the ability to predict future disruptions and consequences, and provide adaptive solutions to avoid performance loss. This research aims to develop a formalized model of an anticipation mechanism and analyses the working of this mechanism through a computational agent-based simulation study of airport security operations.