Evaluating How System Health Assessment Can Trigger Anticipatory Action for Resilience

Abstract

In 2014, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory developed and implemented a novel approach to assess the system by which the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence delivers infrastructure projects and services. This approach brought together existing methods to constitute a hybrid problem structuring method that offered the potential to trigger anticipatory intervention by focusing on the health as opposed to the performance of this system. This paper revisits the initial assessment to examine whether use of the method has led to increased system resilience, and in particular to understand what it was about the method that helped to deliver benefits. Insights with regard to the structures and processes necessary to enable anticipatory action for resilience are presented.