Resilience and Systems—A Review

Khalilullah Mayar, David G. Carmichael and Xuesong Shen
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Khalilullah Mayar: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
David G. Carmichael: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Xuesong Shen: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 14, 1-22

Abstract: This paper presents, from a systems orientation, a review of the resilience literature since its emergence as an ecological concept in academic parlance in 1973. It argues that much of the resilience literature covers existing ground in that existing engineering systems stability ideas are being reinvented. The review follows modern control systems theory as the comparison framework, where each system, irrespective of its disciplinary association, is represented in terms of inputs, state, and outputs. Modern control systems theory is adopted because of its cohesiveness and universality. The review reveals that resilience can be thought of in terms of adaptive systems and adaptation, where the system has the ability to respond to perturbations and changes through passive and active feedback mechanisms—returning the system state or system form to a starting position or transitioning to another suitable state or form. This systematic and cross-disciplinary review offers the potential for a greater understanding of resilience and the elimination of overlap in the literature, particularly related to terminology.

Keywords: resilience; resilience definitions; engineering resilience; socio-ecological resilience; resilience engineering; system thinking; adaptive control systems; state-space approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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