Resilience vs Robustness

Resilience vs Robustness

Resilience for the purposes of this chapter is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from failure (including the consequences of external change outside of the decision maker’s control), and robustness as the capacity to resist failure. Taking a strategic approach based on resilience also implies the early detection of signs of failure to minimize the energy cost of recovery. The signs of potential success, or success through failure, also require early detection to reduce energy costs of amplification. Robustness under this definition requires a degree of foresight; we have to anticipate the likely range of events with which we will have to deal and that, as we will see, is highly problematic under conditions of uncertainty.