A Framework to Approach Planning for Resilience

Abstract

Security professionals do not have good tools for planning and managing complex systems that make states and communities function. Here we present a framework for thinking about resilience in the face of multiple, sometimes synchronous shocks which threaten stability, human and national security. We propose a framework beginning with the foundations of productivity, centered on the natural environment. Providers draw on these foundations, to supply food, shelter, transport, finance, policing, and so on, but governance plays a vital role in policy responses and preemptive planning. The framework identifies enablers and externalities that affect the continuity or security of complex systems. The value of the framework lies in providing ways to examine and communicate about the complex interactions that affect human and national security over time, as security professionals grapple with emerging threats such as climate change, population movements, and resource depletion.

A Continuum of Nation-State Resiliency to Watershed Terrorist Events

“…Those include, ''markets,'' ''policy and security,'' and ''governance.'' 10 In similar fashion, Seidman describes the importance of the domain of international relations, by contrast to Walklate, Mythen, and McGarry's more expansive notion of ''socioeconomic context'' that should include political, legal, as well as economic determinants at 478 Armed Forces & Society 40 (3) both international and domestic levels. 11 All of the foregoing makes it possible to trace an arc from the metrics used here to measure resiliency in this study to more contemporary studies of what constitutes a condition of resiliency.…”