Architecting For Resilience and Sustainability
Stuart Boardman Edinburgh 20 November 2015
CONTEXTPropositions and definitions
What do we mean by….
Sustainability• Wikipedia: “…the capacity of a system to endure and remain functional
and productive over time”• Merriam Webster: “….method of harvesting or using a resource so that the
resource is not depleted or permanently damaged• Oxford: Able to be maintained at a certain rate or level”
Resilience• BS65000(2014) Organisational -"ability of an organization to anticipate,
prepare for, and respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper”
• Wikipedia: Ecological. “the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly”
Taleb• Antifragile
Sustainability, Resilience and Us
The case for sustainability is the same for organizations as for the planet.
Resilience is a property of a sustainable system. It requires us to understand how the system works.
Humans and Technology
We create the biggest problems by trying to control everything.
When something goes wrong we are totally unprepared.We make it worse by using technology to execute our stupid rules.
“SMART” THINGS AND STUPID PEOPLE
Doing It Wrong
Some Stories
Predictable but not predicted• Things that could have been smart but weren’t:
• Emergency generator that wouldn’t switch off• The car that thought it was broken• The smart home that wasn’t (ZDNet – the night Alexa)
Black swans• Burst main causes hospital evacuation
causes traffic chaosWhat’s the problem? No systems thinking.
My CitroenThe problem• In the Ardennes, going uphill, almost horizontal driving rain• Engine cuts out – warning message incomprehensible – some sensor
says I have big problems• Towed to garage
The Solution• motor mechanic rubs moustache knowingly• drills a hole in something next to the engine, says “it’ll be OK now”• “should I get it fixed properly when I get home?”• “no – leave it alone”
The explanation• A casing round the sensor, placed to protect it, became filled with
water. No one had thought of that. Sensor thinks “I’m wet, better switch the engine off”
The Hospital Generator
Mains power outage in area around hospital• Power management system signals emergency generator to
switch on• Generator switches on Mains power returns• Power management system refuses to switch back to mains
powerExplanation• Generator hadn’t returned handshake to management system,
so it wasn’t “on”• So the system couldn’t revert• Simple design error but typical – assumes everything will work
“normally” - leads to counter-productive action
Systemic Thinking
Central organizational
principle is relationship
and process – not structure
and rules
Everything is part of
something
ECOSYSTEM FALLOUTAll about Stuart’s car
666Now I drive a VW diesel I selected it because of
the low emissions
Now my dealer is spamming me with mails about their sustainability policy
Affected Ecosystems
Wolfsburg Almost 50% of the
population work directly for VW
Local Council budget depends on company
taxation
Affected EcosystemsThe state of
Lower SaxonyShareholder in VW
Factories in 3 other cities
Affected EcosystemsThe
automobile industryShares down everywhere
The German automobile
industry
The German economy
Affected EcosystemsThe Netherlands
Tax breaks for low CO2
- Standard 20%- Diesel (low) 14%- Hybrid 7%- Electric 4%
(except above EUR60K)Tesla just opened a second
factory in Tilburg
Affected EcosystemsOur world
Can regulatory control succeed?
Are we consumers or citizens?
Are we solving problems with the thinking that created them?
If we go fossil free what happens to oil based
economies?
How will shareholders react?
The Automobile Ecosystem
• New high-end cars are among the most sophisticated machines on the planet, containing 100 million or more lines of code
• More and more recalled cars – good thing or bad one?– In July, Ford said that it would recall 432,000 Focus, C-Max and Escape
vehicles because of a software bug that could keep the cars’ engines running even after drivers tried to shut them off
Source: New York Times 27/09/2015
Get me out of here!
SMART PEOPLE & STUPID PEOPLE
More ways of getting it wrong
A story about complexity in which ancient wisdom beats “modern” meddling
Along rivers in Bali, small groups of farmers meet regularly in water temples to manage their irrigation systems. They have done so for a thousand years. Over the centuries, water temple networks have expanded to manage the ecology of rice terraces at the scale of whole watersheds. Although each group focuses on its own problems, a global solution nonetheless emerges that optimizes irrigation flows for everyone. Did someone have to design Bali's water temple networks, or could they have emerged from a self-organizing process?
MAKING PEOPLE SMARTERUnderstanding your ecosystem
Building Smarter Models When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it
hitched to everything else in the universe. – John Muir
To understand any complex, adaptive system, we must look outside its limits
All models are wrong But some models are useful. – Jerry Ravetz
Static Models
What we have done for us
What we do (and how that
works)
(And what we know about that)
What they have done for them(that’s relevant for us)
And how it might affect us
What else affects their business
That we ought to keep an eye on
Economy
Resources
Policy
Innovation
Environment
Stakeholders
Customers
EmployeesInvestors
Society
http://blog.opengroup.org/2014/12/30/the-onion-from-the-inside-out/
Dynamic Models – Causal Loops
Source: Pallab Saha https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/D128
Interacting Loops
Source: Pallab Saha https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/D128
Dealing With Uncertainty
Checklists
Presentation: relation to problem and to audience
Which stakeholders are critical &
are they sufficiently involved?
What things are
uncertain, to what extent
and how much do
they matter?How good is our
knowledge base?
How (well) is the
problem framed?
http://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/PBL_2013_Guidance-for-uncertainty-assessment-and-communication_712.pdf Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
Operational ModelsAgent-Based Modeling shows how ancient wisdom works.
An agent-based model (ABM) is one of a class of computational models for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents (both individual or collective entities such as organizations or groups) with a view to assessing their effects on the system as a whole.Agent-based models are a kind of microscale model that simulate the simultaneous operations and interactions of multiple agents in an attempt to re-create and predict the appearance of complex phenomena. The process is one of emergence from the lower (micro) level of systems to a higher (macro) level. As such, a key notion is that simple behavioral rules generate complex behavior.Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model
Smart Things & Smart People• Let things do what they’re good at
– Machines calculate and react faster– People think wider, less predictably, bring
experience and emergence• Continuous exchange of information
between people and machines– The mechanic and Citroen and my car
• IoT, Data Science, Cognitive Computing – and the shop floor
Theories/Frameworks/Insights• Systemic thinking and sensemaking
– Beer & Ashby • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model• http://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=home• http://www.fractal-consulting.com/VSM-Intro-Fractal.pdf• http://talesoftheenterprise.com/2013/06/mr-ashbys-bright-idea/
– Funtowicz/Ravetz Post-normal Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-normal_science
Graves - Service Oriented Enterprise & SCAN • http://weblog.tetradian.com/2014/10/29/services-and-ecanvas-review-summary/• http://weblog.tetradian.com/2013/06/07/a-simpler-scan/ • http://weblog.tetradian.com/2015/01/29/toolsets-for-associative-modelling/
– Hodgson, Ison in Learning for Sustainability (ed Wals, Corcoran)
– Heuristics/common sense : BMC, TOGAF– Via negativia – Taleb in Antifragile
Sustainable Architecture: a Profile
http://www.ruthmalan.com/Journal/2014/2014JournalJanuary.htm#Agility_Integrity_Sustainability
@ruthmalan
