“Resilient communities are a self-organizing response to global system failure. In thermodynamic terms, for those that like this model, RCs are a high evolved dissipative structure that replaces a closed thermodynamic system on its way to equilibrium (heat death).1
…This conceptual model creates a set of new services that allow the smallest viable subset of social systems, the community (however you define it), to enjoy the fruits of globalization without being completely vulnerable to its excesses. These services are configured to provide the ability to survive an extended disconnection from the global grid in the following areas (an incomplete list):
* Energy.
* Food.
* Security (both active and passive).
* Communications.
* Transportation.The resilient community has broad applicability beyond just improving the ability of those of us in developed economies to preserve wealth and a quality of life despite severe system shocks. It can also be applied to the problems of counter-insurgency in semi-modern urban environment (to radically update a process that was built for the last century) and provide the potential for organic development in underdeveloped areas of the world. The key is that we need to support the open source efforts currently underway to expand this capability underway such as the transition towns movement to MIT’s low tech solutions effort. – John Robb
This idea has growing traction. This years Boyd Conference addresses the “Resilient Communities“:
What – There is an opportunity to hold a short, intense seminar on the applicability of Boyd’s ideas, particularly operating inside the OODA loop and grand strategy (sustaining our own morale and attracting the uncommitted), on the weekend of December 6-7 at the University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PEI. Canada!Purpose – The theme would be applying these ideas to conflict in the post-Iraq era, and more specifically to the types of diffused, networked, “open source” armed conflicts that some have called “fifth generation warfare.”
We are also interested in exploring solutions, such as the role of “resilient communities” (RC), for countering them. As Oil and food prices have climbed and the mortgage crisis has grown, the need to think more about Resilient Communities has become more urgent. We may have to re-invent our world!
We envision this as a working seminar to help shape the policy agenda in the first year of the new administration.
So we’re looking for a couple dozen attendees, all of whom would either make short presentations on their areas of interest or participate in panel discussions and working groups.
We also hope that the participants will leave with their own agenda items — to improve resilience within their organizations or to prepare articles and opeds on these subjects in the months after the seminar.
If I could, I would go!
