Front matter for Infrastructure System Resilience

Integrating Resilience and Sustainability into Civil Engineering Projects, edited by Caroline Field and Chris Zawislak (ASCE/IRD 2023). IRP 6 describes how the engineering community is working to integrate social science, policy, and economics into the planning, design, and management decisions surrounding physical infrastructure projects. (ISBN 978-0-7844-8481-4)

Resilience-Based Performance: Next Generation Guidelines for Buildings and Lifeline Standards, by the Risk and Resilience Measurement Committee (ASCE/IRD 2019). IRP 3 discusses the enhancements that are needed in the design and construction of buildings and lifeline systems to support a community's social stability, economic vitality, and environmental sustainability. (ISBN 978-0-7844-8206-3)

Leveraging Sustainable Infrastructure for Resilient Communities, edited by Michael F. Bloom and Krishna R. Reddy (ASCE/EWRI 2019). This collection contains 13 peer-reviewed papers on best practices in sustainability presented at the International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure 2021, held virtually December 6–10, 2021. (ISBN 978-0-7844-8387-9)

Climate-Resilient Infrastructure: Adaptive Design and Risk Management, by the Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate; edited by Bilal M. Ayyub (ASCE/CACC 2018). MOP 140 provides guidance for developing or enhancing of methods for infrastructure analysis and design to achieve infrastructure resilience targets while minimizing life-cycle costs in a changing climate. (ISBN 978-0-7844-1519-1)

Hazard-Resilient Infrastructure: Analysis and Design, edited by Bilal M. Ayyub (ASCE/IRD 2021). MOP 144 provides guidance and underlying framework for creating consistency across hazards, systems, and sectors in the design of new infrastructure systems and in enhancing the resilience of existing ones. (ISBN 978-0-7844-1575-7)

Methods for how to implement resilience into all types of infrastructure systems are needed, but it is sometimes difficult for infrastructure owners and operators to understand how to incorporate the concepts of resilience into their daily operations. This is because resilience is a complicated, multidisciplinary, and multihazard notion. It has its roots in ecological systems (Holling 1973, 1996) and has been researched for many years to identify how to implement it into social (Miles and Chang 2006), economic (Rose 2004), and engineered systems (Bruneau et al. 2003). The research results identify the need to modify how society prepares for, responds to, and recovers from disasters in a systematic way to the numerous calamities occurring around the world every year (UNISDR 2015). These findings have resulted in a push to make resilience operational for communities to reduce the overall impacts of hazards by addressing how to lessen damage and increase recoveries in a combined and efficient way (UNISDR 2015). However, much of the research remains highly theoretical and abstract to professional practice. For example, it is not clear to a practitioner how to consider complex adaptive systems theory and implement it into practice.

At the same time, the foundations for resilience are very broad and touch every aspect of society. As a result, there are countless definitions and perspectives on what resilience is and how it can be addressed in all systems making up our societies. The numerous definitions and perspectives cause confusion to those who want to learn how to incorporate resilience concepts into their organizational actions to improve their functions on a daily basis and when a hazard strikes. The measures taken for some systems may be very different to operationalize resilience into practice than for other types of systems. For example, operationalizing resilience into the financial sectors is not completely the same as operationalizing resilience into infrastructure system sectors, even though these two sectors are related and interdependent because financial sectors need infrastructure systems, and infrastructure systems need financial systems for each to function. Similar examples can be made for the interrelations of almost every other group of systems making up communities. However, perspectives on how to implement resilience from one sector may often be portrayed as a proper perspective on how to deal with resilience in another sector. This leads to further confusion and inconsistencies in applying resilience concepts in the infrastructure system sectors. As a result, there is a need to identify the processes associated with infrastructure resilience and how these processes relate to overall community resilience.

Some fundamental questions arise for infrastructure owners and operators with regard to how to address the concepts of resilience. Why should an infrastructure owner and operator worry about resilience? What is the idea of resilience and how does it apply to the infrastructure sectors? How do the concepts of infrastructure resilience relate to other sectors? What are the basic elements making up infrastructure resilience that an infrastructure owner and operator should understand to operationalize resilience into practice? This book provides a framework to help cut through all the noise surrounding resilience to provide a focus on the issues relating to infrastructure resilience while holding true to the founding principles of complex adaptive systems. The framework is an aid for understanding infrastructure resilience and provides a structure for consistent application of the resilience elements across all infrastructure systems and hazards. Using the framework elements will provide consistency in improving the resilience of all infrastructure systems. This framework is not a comprehensive treatise on infrastructure resilience, but instead is limited to addressing infrastructure assessment, management, and governance because these three facets of infrastructure are considered essential for ensuring that the products and services provided meet the societal needs. The aspects associated with resilient design are presented in a companion book (Infrastructure Resilience Division 2021). Together, these books provide the important tools needed for creating infrastructure systems that are resilient to all types of hazards.

Special acknowledgement is given to ASCE and JSCE. This book is a result of an international cooperative project undertaken jointly by the JSCE and ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division. The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership (CGP) provided some funding for travel to support ASCE-JSCE joint meetings and web site https://www.infraresil.jp/. The efforts of Yukiko Shibuya, JSCE Secretariat, who coordinated and managed the CGP funding, website development, Infrastructure Resilience Research Group meetings and symposia, are gratefully acknowledged. The important contributions of Catherine Tehan, ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division Director, are gratefully acknowledged for her efforts to help coordinate the Infrastructure Resilience Research Group and development of this book.

This publication is coauthored by members of the ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division and members of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers. Together they constitute the Infrastructure Resilience Research Group. The purpose of this publication is to provide a structured international framework to engineer resilient infrastructure systems, improve the global understanding of what makes infrastructure systems resilient, and focus institutions toward common research, development, and implementation goals.

The Infrastructure Resilience Division (IRD) within ASCE was established in 2014. It had become apparent to the membership of ASCE that an overarching effort to work across subdisciplines within civil engineering was needed to better articulate and facilitate common goals and objectives that consider the broader context of the resilience of connected infrastructure systems. To address this effort, the Infrastructure Resilience Division and several technical committees were formed.

The Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE) was established in 1914 with the mission to contribute to the advancement of scientific culture by promoting the field of civil engineering and the expansion of civil engineering activities.

In 2018, the president of JSCE launched a collaborative research group with the ASCE IRD to research infrastructure resilience. This project aimed to develop a conceptual framework of infrastructure resilience. Members of ASCE IRD and JSCE collaborated to develop the framework, share the concepts, and present examples of the application of the framework at conference sessions and symposia in the United States and Japan, and online, and revise the framework to reflect feedback from the presentations and meetings. This book is an outcome of this collaborative project.

Infrastructure system resilience prior to or following disruptions caused by natural or technological hazards is intimately linked to, and supports, community resilience. This book presents a framework, consisting of eight key elements, connecting processes and tools for assessment to management- and governance-related decisions and community outcomes. The framework presents a flow process to identify the inter-relationships between the main elements comprising infrastructure system resilience. It recognizes infrastructure as interdependent sociotechnical systems capable of achieving resilience through optimized flow and provision of services to users that satisfy community-level objectives through adaptations and by reducing social and economic losses while enhancing community well-being. Feedback captures the opportunities for improvement and the potential for emergent organizational structures. The framework can aid in developing policy, social, and economic outcomes. Drawing on the capabilities and limitations of existing frameworks to infrastructure resilience, each element and the relevant connects are described in detail. Examples from the literature and practice are used to illustrate the concepts and connections to engineering new and existing resilient infrastructure systems.

This book fulfills the need for a standard international framework to engineer resilient infrastructure systems, improve the global understanding of what makes infrastructure systems resilient, and focus institutions toward common research, development, and implementation goals. The first chapter introduces the need for an infrastructure resilience framework to fill gaps that currently exist in other resilience frameworks.

Chapter 2 describes the framework through flow diagrams interlinking eight elements broken into an assessment portion and a management and governance portion. The eight elements are (1) the Infrastructure Resilience Domain, (2) Building and Lifeline Infrastructure System Performance or Functionality, (3) System Service Provision and Operability, (4) Continuity of Services, (5) Social and Economic Activity, (6) Community, (7) Establish Community Performance Targets, and (8) Define Infrastructure System Performance Targets. Chapter 2 also describes a method for incorporating feedback and identifies the framework processes, tools, and outcomes.

Chapter 3 describes the outcomes of the infrastructure resilience framework. The outcomes include policy, assessments of social and economic losses, economics of resilience and tools. These outcomes may also inject back into the framework through different elements.

Chapter 4 discusses the overarching aspects of infrastructure system assessment, management, and governance. This chapter also makes links between community resilience and the infrastructure assessment, management, and governance.

Chapter 5 explains how the framework can be applied in part, or in whole. It also explains how the framework may initiate at any element and its application to the design of infrastructure systems and their components.

Chapter 6 provides a summary and conclusions.

The book also provides three appendices of useful supporting information. Appendix A reviews existing resilience frameworks and tabulates how they interrelate with the framework for assessment, management, and governance. Appendix B provides an overview of the relationship between the underlying complex adaptive systems theory and the infrastructure resilience framework for assessment, management, and governance. Appendix C describes the social, built infrastructure, and natural environment systems relationships.

Members of the ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division (hereafter referred to as ASCE IRD) and the JSCE prepared this document titled Infrastructure System Resilience: An Engineering Framework for Assessment, Management, and Governance. Although this product was produced using the best available resources, ASCE IRD makes no warranty, expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its uses would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the ASCE IRD.

Although this publication provides extensive references, it is not intended to include a comprehensive literature review of all the topics covered nor the work of other meritorious experts. Such a comprehensive review is beyond the scope of this publication, which is intended to inform engineering practice by bringing together a survey of various approaches currently available to the professional engineer. The reader is expected to utilize their expert judgment to determine the applicability of any particular method to any challenge at hand.