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Howard and Chris, you both have much to say about whether and how a pattern language for resilient systems might be discovered. Starting with the characteristics and principles of resilience (in ecosystems, in organizations, in individuals, etc.) may lead to fascinating insights. Are there patterns that occur universally? Do the patterns of ecosystems resilience apply equally to social systems, or are there important differences?

Chris, have you seen the pattern language Ecotrust developed, Patterns for a Conservation Economy? Howard's 2008 piece on Modularity also discusses patterns in the context of resilience.

Back to characteristics, earlier today in Googling "modular design" to look for more stories to share here, we found this book:

Yossi Sheffi, The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage, MIT Press, 2005

Publisher's description:

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

Thank you Peter+Trudy for your links and suggestions. I have a great deal of review ahead of me, beginning with some very intriguing articles on your website.

Neal, I'd love to cross-post my post D4R synthesis. Thanks for the invitation to do so!

And Howard, in rereading your post I realized you will not be in attendance. Bummer. Perhaps we could set up a conversation sometime soon and explore these ideas together.

Together on Earth,
Chris

I opened Holmgren's Permaculture, Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability (http://bit.ly/9H1TZq) this morning, and turning to Principle 7: Design from Patterns to Details, found a few notable quotes. (And, a reference to A Pattern Language, so it seems I am spiraling around and up a level in my inquiry here, because while his direct call to develop A Pattern Language for Permaculture was not in the forefront of my awareness in this round, I was highly influenced by Holmgren's book some years ago and certainly was sub-consciously referencing it in my inquiry for a Pattern Language for Resilience.)

Two to note (voice transcriptions and may not be 100% accurate):

"The spider on its Web, with its concentric and radial design, evokes zone and sector site planning, the best-known and perhaps most widely applied aspect of Permaculture design. The design pattern of the web is clear, but the details always very.

Modernity has tended to scramble any systemic common sense or intuition that can order the jumble of design possibilities and options that confront us in all fields. This problem of focus on detailed complexity leads to the design of white elephants that are large and impressive but do not work, or juggernauts that consume all our energy and resources while always threatening to run out of control. Complex systems that work tend to evolve from simple ones that work, so finding the appropriate pattern for that design is more important than understanding all the details of the elements in the system.

The proverb "can't see the wood (forest) for the trees" reminds us that the details tend to distract our awareness of the nature of the system; the closer we get the less we are able to comprehend the larger picture."

and (to the point made above about the universal applicability of patterns):

"Bill Molson's introduction to patterns in nature provides a broad, inspiring picture of a great field of potential applications in Permaculture design. The search for spatial and temporal patterns in nature, which take us beyond the Euclidean geometries that dominate our educated thinking, is important for designers in every field. Molson says "learning to master a pattern is very like learning a principle; it may be applicable over a wide range of phenomena, some complex and some simple." Although it is important to understand the relevance of the organic and apparently irregular patterns of nature to human systems, often our attempts to apply these patterns are arbitrary and inappropriate."

I also have a journal entry in my office that I will retrieve as I have a list of "other sets of resilience characteristics and design principles that can be integrated into this consideration of a pattern language for resilient systems".

Thanks for this rich dialogue.