Antifragility analysis and measurement framework for systems of systems

• Published in: International journal of disaster risk science 2013-12, Vol.4 (4), p.159-168
• Main Authors: Johnson, John, Gheorghe, Adrian V.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Climate Change; Complex systems; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Engineering; Environment; Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning; Natural Hazards; Smart grid technology; Studies; Sustainable Development
• ISSN: 2095-0055; 2192-6395
• DOI: 10.1007/s13753-013-0017-7

The twenty-first century is defined by the social and technical hazards we face. A hazardous situation is a condition, or event, that threatens the well-being of people, organizations, societies, environments, and property. The most extreme of the hazards are considered X-Events and are an exogenous source of extreme stress to a system. X-Events can also be the unintended outputs of a system with both positive (serendipitous) and negative (catastrophic) consequences. Systems can vary in their ability to withstand these stress events. This ability exists on a continuum of fragility that ranges from fragile (degrading with stress), to robust (unchanged by stress), to antifragile (improving with stress). The state of the art does not include a method for analyzing or measuring fragility. Given that “what we measure we will improve,” the absence of a measurement approach limits the effectiveness of governance in making our systems less fragile and more robust if not antifragile. The authors present an antifragile system simulation model, and propose a framework for analyzing and measuring antifragility based on system of systems concepts. The framework reduces a multidimensional concept of fragility into a two-dimensional continuous interval scale.