Author: Erik Hollnagel  Technical note publication date: 2015

Erik Hollnagel introduced the Resilience Analysis Grid as a method for accessing the resilience of a system by determining how it may perform in both known and unknown conditions.Hollnagel presents four capabilities or potentials that must be present for a system to exhibit resilient performance: 1) the ability to respond based on knowing what to do; 2) the ability to monitor based on knowing what to look for; 3) the ability to anticipate based on knowing what to expect; and 4) the ability to learn based on knowing what has happened. Because the four abilities make resilience performance possible, the resilience of a system can be assessed by identifying the extent to which each of the four abilities are present and supported in the system.

Park, Jeryang, Thomas P. Seager, Palakurth Suresh Chandra Rao, Matteo Convertino, and Igor Linkov.  Risk Analysis 33, no. 3 (2013): 356-367.

Integrating risk and resilience approaches to catastrophe management in engineering systems provides a basis for understanding resilience analysis as a complementary approach to risk analysis. Previously, resilience theory in complex systems was dominated by ecologists and non-engineers. Park et al. argue that these perspectives on resilience are inappropriate for complex engineering systems because technologies are created with human intention.

Edited by Erik Hollnagel, Jean Paréis, David D. Woods, and John Wreathall

Resilience Engineering in Practice provides a practical interpretation of a resilient system performance based on the system’s ability to adjust its functioning. A central aim is to determine how resilient performance can be achieved by effectively engineering the four abilities of a resilient system: respond to the actual, monitor the critical, anticipate the potential, and learn from the factual. Considering the four abilities from an operational perspective offers an evidence-based approach that starts from a ‘whole-system’ level and leads to operational details on a concrete level.