Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The global system resilience refers to the capacity of an global system to
withstand perturbations from e.g. climatic, economic, technological and social
causes and to rebuild and renew itself afterwards [10]. Loss of resilience can
cause loss of valuable system services, and may even lead to rapid transitions
or shifts into qualitatively different situations and configurations.
In general terms, the vulnerability of a system is assessed according to the
concept of resilience, developed in the mathematics of non-linear differential
equations. According to this frame, the opposite to the vulnerability of a
system is its stability, its resilience, defined specifically as an attribute of a
system. The system is like a net; it consists of a great number of not's, which
are interlinked.
Resilience provides a new framework for analyzing economic, ecological,
technological and social systems in a changing world facing many
uncertainties and challenges. It represents an area of explorative research
under rapid development with major policy implications for sustainable
development.
Sometimes change is gradual and things move forward in roughly
continuous and predictable ways. In other times, change is sudden,
disorganized and turbulent reflected by climate impacts, earth system science
challenges and vulnerable regions. Evidence points out to a situation where
periods of such abrupt changes are likely to increase in frequency and
magnitude
Resilience indicator of global warming can be modeled as processes
defined with respective indicators including: global temperature, economic
welfare, environment indicator and social indicator. Global temperature is the
average atmospheric temperature. Economic welfare is defined with the
average global income per capita. Environment indicator is average carbon
dioxide concentration in earth atmosphere. Social indicator reflects poverty
index as the average global income per capita.
The definition of resilience indicator is based on the time derivative of
Sustainability Index formed as the sum of membership functions reflecting
individual indicators of the system.
3.1.4. Sustainability Index Definition
If an alternative of the system is assigned as the object then all alternative
that are taken into a consideration is making the finite set of object [11]
