Strategies for managing environments with high uncertainty: Emerging principles and tools for resilience

This seminar is part of the Risk and Resilience Seminar Series.

Professor Longstaff Presentation Slides

Seminar summary: Many observers have noted that we are entering a time of higher uncertainty, with fast and strong disruptions in many systems. This has been called the New Normal. This is affecting technical systems, biological systems, economic systems, and human organizations.  This has increased interest in resilience, a strategy that is often seen in systems that must operate under high uncertainty – systems in which it is not possible to predict or resist disruption. Longstaff discussed some of the attributes of resilience that are seen in many systems and how resilience can fail. These attributes and processes were first noted in ecological systems and are now being more widely studied. She also presented her Toolkit for increasing resilience, and has previously presented these ideas to military, business, NGO, and government organizations.

Speaker Biography: Professor Patricia Longstaff came to the study of resilience as part of her ongoing search for ways to manage and regulate systems with high uncertainty. She has published several papers in this area, including a multidisciplinary analysis of the concept of resilience and its implications for public policy and planning for “surprises” such as terrorism and natural disasters. She received funding from the National Science Foundation to lead a cross-disciplinary investigation of resilience and has presented her ideas at conferences around the world. She is currently a James Martin Senior Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. Back home, she is the David Levidow Professor of Communication Law and Policy and a faculty member of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT) at Syracuse University . She is also a Research Affiliate at the Harvard University Program for Information Policy Research (PIRP).  She is a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy (ACICIP) and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Telecommunications Society (ITS).