Resources

Resilience is universally understood to be a ‘good’ concept. Improving the ability to prevent, or respond to, disruption is objectively desirable. However, the means by which we look to achieve resilience is more subjective and debatable.

• What do we want to be resilient to?
• How do we prioritise investment to improve resilience to disruption?
• How should stakeholders be consulted when making decisions about resilience?

In addition to the subjectivity of resilience is a plurality of terms, definitions and understanding of the various concepts relating to resilience. A lack of consistency in this regard makes it more difficult for decision makers to do what is right for communities of interest.

With this in mind, the NZ Transport Agency commissioned research to ‘establish a consistent approach to transport resilience; terminology, levels of service, valuation and responses’.

The scope of the research also included the development an updatable Decision Support Tool to weigh up different controls consistently and to create an acceptable level of resilience in (transport) infrastructure – in a way that achieves desired community outcomes.

Keywords: Decision Support Tool, governance and leadership, infrastructure, recovery, redundancy, resilience, robustness, taxonomy, transport