A Functional Resonance Analysis Method Driven Resilience Quantification for Socio-Technical Systems

Due to the continuous increment in complexity of the socio-technical systems, decision makers call for new methods able to support timely as well as accurate decision making related to resilience management. The current methods tend to be polarized on: efficiency-thoroughness forcing decision makers in making decisions on the base of resource availability instead of the problem to be solved. The article is presenting a new fast-forward, cost effective and thorough enough framework to quantify resilience of a complex socio-technical system. The approach extends the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) with a numerical method for the quantification of the analysis (Q-FRAM). In particular, it has been extended and operationalized the qualitative concepts of functional variability and dumping capacities into a method in which KPI and indicator are derived from the model and aggregated, into 4 indicators representing the FRAM resilience cornerstones (Anticipate, Respond, Monitor, Learn) through a bottom-up hierarchical approach. Finally, the 4 indicators are composed in a unique System Resilience Index that expresses the total variability present in the system at instant t. A numerical example of the use of the framework is provided together with a validation based on a comparison of the proposed approach with the current landscape.