Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve sustainability. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot solve resource problems and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options rather than closing them down. In Resilience Thinking, scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt present an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real world. It is an engaging and important work for anyone interested in managing risk in a complex world.

All systems break down. Some bounce back, others do not. This is a book about why. Covering business, economic, geographic and social systems, Zolli uncovers a wealth of absorbing examples--from the link between US oil prices and the recent 'tortilla riots' in Mexico to what was really happening when the U.S. government decided not to bail out Lehman Bros.

The number of megacities worldwide is rapidly increasing and contemporary cities are also expanding fast. As a result, cities and their inhabitants are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the effects of catastrophic natural events such as extreme weather events (recently more frequent and intense as a result of the ongoing climate changes), earthquakes, tsunamis or man-induced events such as terrorist attacks or accidents. Furthermore, due to increasing technological complexity of urban areas, along with increasing population density, cities are becoming more and more risk attractors. The resilience of cities against catastrophic events is a major challenge of today. It requires city transformation processes to be rethought, to mitigate the effects of extreme events on the vital functions of cities and communities. Redundancy and robustness of the components of the urban fabric are essential to restore the full efficiency of the city's vital functions after an extreme event has taken place. These items were addressed by an interdisciplinary and international selection of scientists during the 6th UN-World Urban Forum that was held in Naples, Italy in September 2012. This volume represents in six chapters the views from sociologists, economists and scientists working on natural risk and physical vulnerability on resilience and sustainability for future cities in relation to natural disasters.

This open access book addresses the way in which urban and urbanizing regions profoundly impact and are impacted by climate change. The editors and authors show why cities must wage simultaneous battles to curb global climate change trends while adapting and transforming to address local climate impacts. This book addresses how cities develop anticipatory and long-range planning capacities for more resilient futures, earnest collaboration across disciplines, and radical reconfigurations of the power regimes that have institutionalized the disenfranchisement of minority groups. Although planning processes consider visions for the future, the editors highlight a more ambitious long-term positive visioning approach that accounts for unpredictability, system dynamics and equity in decision-making. This volume brings the science of urban transformation together with practices of professionals who govern and manage our social, ecological and technological systems to design processes by which cities may achieve resilient urban futures in the face of climate change.

Reflecting the very latest research, this book provides an in-depth review of the role of resilience in the management of social-ecological systems and the ecosystem services they provide. Leaders in the field outline seven principles for building resilience in social-ecological systems, examining how these can be applied to advance sustainability.

Stories from Nokia, Dell, UPS, Toyota, and other companies show how firms can reduce their vulnerability to high-impact distributions, from earthquakes to strikes, from SARS to terrorism, and use them for competitive advantage. What happens when fire strikes the manufacturing plant of the sole supplier for the brake pressure valve used in every Toyota? When a hurricane shuts down production at a Unilever plant? When Dell and Apple chip manufacturers in Taiwan take weeks to recover from an earthquake? When the U.S. Pacific ports are shut down during the Christmas rush? When terrorists strike? In The Resilient Enterprise, Yossi Sheffi shows that companies' fortunes in the face of such business shocks depend more on choices made before the disruption than they do on actions taken in the midst of it—and that resilience benefits firms every day, disaster or no disaster. He shows how companies can build in flexibility throughout their supply chains, based on proven design principles and the right culture—balancing security, redundancy, and short-term profits. And he shows how investments in resilience and flexibility not only reduce risk but create a competitive advantage in the increasingly volatile marketplace.Sheffi describes the way companies can increase security—reducing the likelihood of a disruption—with layered defenses, the tracking and analysis of “near-misses,” fast detection, and close collaboration with government agencies, trading partners, and even competitors. But the focus of the book is on resilience—the ability to bounce back from disruptions and disasters—by building in redundancy and flexibility. For example, standardization, modular design, and collaborative relationships with suppliers (and other stakeholders) can help create a robust supply chain. And a corporate culture of flexibility—with distributed decision making and communications at all levels—can create a resilient enterprise.Sheffi provides tools for companies to reduce the vulnerability of the supply chain they live in. And along the way he tells the stories of dozens of enterprises, large and small, including Toyota, Nokia, General Motors, Zara, Land Rover, Chiquita, Aisin Seiki, Southwest Airlines, UPS, Johnson and Johnson, Intel, Amazon.com, the U.S. Navy, and others, from across the globe. Their successes, failures, preparations, and methods provide a rich set of lessons in preparing for and managing disruptions. Additional material available at www.TheResilientEnterprise.com.

The edited book comprises invited book chapter contributions from global experts in the field of sustainable materials and resilient infrastructure. The book covers the most critical and emerging topics for creating sustainable solutions for the construction industry, promoting the technologies and monitoring methods for resilient infrastructure. It focuses on sustainable solutions and offers techniques and methodologies to deliver high-quality end solutions in civil engineering. In addition, the content provides knowledge-based information for the readers to assess, monitor, measure, and practice sustainability for resilient infrastructure. The contents of the volume are a blend of academic research work and industrial case studies. It covers the use of sustainable materials like Lime-Pozzolona Binders, biopolymers, lignosulphonate, lightweight aggregates made from fly ash, calcinated clay, paper ash, and limestone as amendments/ameliorators for soil remediation, development of neo-construction materials and composites for civil engineering applications. Design of innovative pavements using alkali activation and pervious concrete for sustainable infrastructure is also discussed. The chapters also highlight the role of civil engineers in achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals, promoting climate change design for urban landscapes, and modelling building energy demand. This book is framed to address the principles and practice from the corners of geoenvironment, sustainable construction materials, low carbon materials, energy efficiency, and waste management. It is a valuable reference for faculty, researchers, field experts, scientists, and practicing engineers.

The second edition of this textbook comprehensively discusses global supply-chain and operations management, combining value creation networks and interacting processes. It focuses on the operational roles in the networks and presents the quantitative and organizational methods needed to plan and control the material, information and financial flows in the supply chain. Each chapter starts with an introductory case study, and numerous examples from various industries and services help to illustrate the key concepts. The book explains how to design operations and supply networks and how to incorporate suppliers and customers. It also examines matching supply and demand, which is a core aspect of tactical planning, before turning to the allocation of resources for fulfilling customer demands. This second edition features three new chapters: “Supply Chain Risk Management and Resilience”, “Digital Supply Chain, Smart Operations, and Industry 4.0”, and “Pricing and Revenue-Oriented Capacity Allocation”. These new chapters provide the structured knowledge on the principles, models, and technologies for managing the supply-chain risks and improving supply-chain and operations performance with the help of digital technologies such as Industry 4.0, additive manufacturing, Internet-of-Things, advanced optimization methods and predictive analytics. The existing chapters have been updated and new case studies have been included. In addition, the preface provides guidelines for instructors on how to use the material for different courses in supply-chain and operations management and at different educational levels, such as general undergraduate, specialized undergraduate, and graduate courses. The companion website www.global-supply-chain-management.de has also been updated accordingly. In addition, the book is now supported by e-manuals for supply-chain and operations simulation and optimization in AnyLogic and anyLogistix. Providing readers with a working knowledge of global supply-chain and operations management, with a focus on bridging the gap between theory and practice, this textbook can be used in core, special and advanced classes. It is intended for broad range of students and professionals involved in supply-chain and operations management.

The theme of this volume on systems engineering research is disciplinary convergence: bringing together concepts, thinking, approaches, and technologies from diverse disciplines to solve complex problems. Papers presented at the Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER), March 23-25, 2017 at Redondo Beach, CA, are included in this volume. This collection provides researchers in academia, industry, and government forward-looking research from across the globe, written by renowned academic, industry and government researchers.