Resilience
Food for a growing world population, climate change and extreme events, environmental pollution and dwindling resources. These are but a few of the major challenges we are facing in the 21st century. Key in this is our resilience.
Quantification of resilience
Our resilience is our capacity to handle current and future shocks. Are we resilient enough? Can our infrastructure and supply systems handle shocks? Or do we need to increase resilience? New concepts for the quantification of resilience are needed to assess the capacity of socio-technical and socio-ecological systems to deal with future shocks.
Resilience emerges from the various and changing interactions between people and their natural and technical environment, and the ability of people to learn, adapt and invent. Shocks affect systems but also lead to changes in people’s behavior, in turn changing their response to future shocks.
Primary tools
We want to understand how the interaction between people and the environment generates resilience, and how we can increase it to deal with future shocks. Our primary tools are modelling and statistics, combined with knowledge of engineering, ecology, food production systems, human sociology, and governance.
Members
- Dr. G.A.K. (George) van Voorn - Wageningen - coordinator
- Dr.ir. C.M. (Marjolein) Dohmen-Janssen - Twente