Chapter X Measures of Resilient Performance

In order to theorize, manage – even engineer – resilience, it is necessary that the factors that contribute to resilience be identified, and that measures of these factors be validated and exercised. Yet to date there have been few systematic attempts to create such measures. Complicating the matter is the fact that the resilience of safety-critical systems may only be manifested during actual operations. As a result, opportunities for controlled study (even systematic observations) on resilient organizations are severely limited. There is therefore a clear need to identify the factors that contribute to resilience, develop measures for these factors, and validate instruments for estimating the values of these factors. This chapter takes as a starting point a set of factors developed in prior research on organizational resilience. It then discusses an approach to refining and measuring these factors. The framework is then applied to the development and assessment of a candidate set of measures for the factors, using data drawn from observation of infrastructure restoration in New York City, New York, following the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center attack.