Resilient systems require both specified and general resilience
A system can encounter two kinds of disturbances: those that can be anticipated, and those that cannot. Resilient systems must account for both of them.
When managing for resilience you need to consider two types of resilience: resilience to disturbances that you are aware of (specified resilience), and resilience to disturbances that you haven’t even thought of (general resilience).[1]
It is important to note that “optimizing for one form of resilience can reduce other forms of resilience. … Managing for specified resilience is important, but so too is maintaining the general capacities of a social-ecological system that allow it to absorb unforeseen disturbances—that is, general resilience.”[2]
See also:
- Specified resilience defends against known disturbances
- General resilience depends on diversity, modularity, and feedbacks
Resilience Thinking – Walker and Salt (2012), ch. 5, § “Key Points on Resilience Thinking.” ↩︎
Ibid., ch. 5, § “General and Specified Resilience.” ↩︎