This is a presentation by Professor Brian Collins at the RUSI Resilience Conference 2014.

1. What is Resilience?
Professor Brian Collins CB, FREng
Professor of Engineering Policy, UCL
STEaPP, UCL

2. Agenda
• Resilience
• Resilient infrastructure
• High availability utility services that must be supplied
– Energy
–– TTrraannssppoorrtt
– Water
– Waste
– Information
• Resilience properties
• Adaptability
• Investment issues
• Provocation

3. Resilience
• The power or ability to return to the original
form, position, function, capability
• Scope is
– Financial – paying bills, collecting payments, cash
– Service – interaction with clients and customers
– Human – pandemics, sskkiillllss,, eexxppeerrttiissee
– Environmental – extreme weather, flood,
earthquake
– Social – helping each other, language
– Functional – systems, data, connectivity
• Interactive and interdependent

6. Characteristics of UK Infrastructure that
are causing concern
• Major unregulated growth in interdependency
• Some population growth and radical change in the
nature of living and working in the last fifty years
• Most infrastructure provision has been privatised
and iinntteerrnnaattiioonnaalliisseedd
• No central governance of infrastructure as a system
• Little investment in resilience to extreme events
• As yet little understanding of the impact of the need
for adaptation and investment in resilience

8. A simplified view of interdependence

9. Incident in East Barnet
Many residents in north London who had their gas cut off have also lost their
electricity after heaters they were given overloaded supplies.
About 750 homes in East Barnet are still without gas, three days after it was cut off.
And EDF energy said about 180 customers have been without electricity since 2030 GMT on
Tuesday.
A spokeswoman for the National Grid said water from a burst main got into the gas pipes,
cutting off the flow.
More than 3,000 cooking and heating appliances have been distributed to the affected
hhoouusseehhoollddss..
And about 150 gas engineers from across the country have gone to Barnet to attempt to get
the homes reconnected by Christmas Day.
They have already restored supplies to 980 properties.
An EDF Energy spokeswoman said: "Following damage to National Grid's gas mains a
number of electric fires have been distributed to residents in
East Barnet who were left without heating.
"The significantly higher demand on the local electricity network has damaged some of EDF
Energy's equipment and interrupted power supplies."
EDF is asking customers to use only essential electricity appliances and switch off any non-essential
appliances as National Grid carries out its repairs.
It has also "reconfigured the electricity network to make it more robust to help with the
extra demand placed on it by the significant increase in the use of electric heaters".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8431654.stm

10. UK 2007 floods

11. UK 2007 floods

12. The UK Government programme
• Published a report by Council of Science and Technology – an
infrastructure fit for 21st century – June 2009
• Recommendations accepted by government in December
2009, forming Infrastructure UK (IUK) in The Treasury as
governance body and lead dept.
• IUK survived the election in May 2010, and the PM published
the National Infrastructure Plan (NIP1) in December 2010.
• Engineering, Interdependency and Resilience aann eexxpplliicciitt
activity which still continues.
• Further findings to be published in Summer 2011 with NIP2
published in November 2011, updated 2012, 2013 and will be
in 2014
• Recommendations for research across all aspects being taken
up slowly by all relevant RCs, Industry and Professional
bodies.
• Resilience, Risk and Governance research now being explicitly
funded

14. Systems engineering
• "Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary
approach and means to enable the realization of
successful systems". [INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook]
• Systems Engineering is all about creating and
sustaining successful, ppuurrppoosseeffuull,, ssyysstteemmss
• Relates to the development and delivery of goods
and services
• Delivers real benefits to the suppliers, customers,
and society
• Works with all technical domains, and all business
functions

15. Systems Thinking
• "Systems Thinking enables you to grasp and manage
situations of complexity and uncertainty in which there
are no simple answers. It’s a way of learning your way
to effective action by looking at connected wholes
rather than separate parts. It is sometimes called
practical holism." [Open University ddeeffiinniittiioonn]]
• "Systems thinking is a framework for seeing
interrelationships rather than things, for seeing
patterns rather then static snapshots. It is a set of
general principles spanning fields as diverse as physical
and social sciences, engineering and
management." [Peter Senge , The Fifth Discipline]

16. Innovation in Systems Thinking
in national infrastructure
• Integration of infrastructure and construction design
– Innovation at the interface between disciplines and sectors
– Balancing costs and benefits, risks and uncertainties
• Human and environmental impact and value capture
– Safety, behaviour, congestion, ccoommmmuunniittyy
– Noise, air quality, pollution, carbon
• Information integration
– Data from all sources over a range of timescales
– Systemic models to enable predictions to support decision
making through whole life cycle and throughout the supply
network

17. Infrastructure Resilience Research
• What aspects of service and systems
performance need to be resilient; how much
resilience is needed and is affordable
• How should resilience aanndd rriisskk bbee vvaalluueedd
– Monetised – financial capital
– Socialised - social capital
– Politicised – political capital
• How does it get maintained and tested
• Where is the data and is it open source

18. Some further research opportunities
• Use new systems thinking approaches to the
evaluation of integrated infrastructure
investment and governance.
• Examine different governance models for their
degree of integration and what aassppeeccttss ooff tthheeiirr
degree of integration have a significant
contribution to the delivery of benefits and
mitigation of risks
• Identify key factors needed in a managed change
programme to improve outcomes by better
integration governance where appropriate

19. Commentary
• Inter-sectoral interdependency and resilience
is poorly understood from a system viewpoint
• Rate of impact is different in different sectors,
so temporal aspects are equally unknown
• Case studies of risk and resilience aarree vviittaall
• Individual and collective social behaviour
under stress is important, and poorly
understood
• Research is underway in UK on all these
aspects

20. Thank you