Resilience Engineering in Practice

Chapter 10

Basic Patterns in How Adaptive Systems Fail

David D. Woods and Matthieu Branlat

This chapter provides one input to resilience management strategies in the form of three basic patterns in how adaptive systems fail. The three basic patterns are (1) decompensation – when the system exhausts its capacity to adapt as disturbances/challenges cascade; (2) working at cross-purposes – when roles exhibit behaviour that is locally adaptive but globally maladaptive; and (3) getting stuck in outdated behaviours – when the system over-relies on past successes. Illustrations are drawn from urban fire-fighting and crisis management. A working organisation needs to be able to see and avoid or recognise and escape when the system is falling into one ...