Resilience

The financial crisis of 2008 led to failed banks, foreclosures, and social movements. The 2011 earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a tsunami that caused thousands of deaths and a nuclear plant failure. Events like these are stark reminders of what can happen when parts of a system are under duress, which raises the question of how complex systems fare amid upsets and threats and what characteristics of systems lead to recovery or renewal after a disruption.

Resilience — the ability of a system to maintain or recover its functionality in a disturbance — is intrinsic to SFI's studies of complex systems. Although complex networks of many interacting components might suggest a systemic fragility, such systems also tend to adapt to disturbances and evolve to changing environments. SFI researchers want to learn how a complex system’s structure and dynamics strengthen or weaken resilience and find principles common to complex systems in an effort to build a general theory of resilience.