Measuring Resilience

Objective: As human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) moves to embrace a greater systems perspective concerning human-machine technologies, new and emergent properties, such as resilience, have arisen. Our objective here is to promote discussion as to how to measure this latter, complex phenomenon. Background: Resilience is now a much-referenced goal for technology and work system design. It subsumes the new movement of resilience engineering. As part of a broader systems approach to HF/E, this concept requires both a definitive specification and an associated measurement methodology. Such an effort epitomizes our present work. Method: Using rational analytic and synthetic methods, we offer an approach to the measurement of resilience capacity. Results: We explicate how our proposed approach can be employed to compare resilience across multiple systems and domains, and emphasize avenues for its future development and validation. Conclusion: Emerging concerns for the promise and potential of resilience and associated concepts, such as adaptability, are highlighted. Arguments skeptical of these emerging dimensions must be met with quantitative answers; we advance one approach here. Application: Robust and validated measures of resilience will enable coherent and rational discussions of complex emergent properties in macrocognitive system science.