Brazilian and Norwegian universities are promoting the 4th edition of a free course on resilience engineering. This year´s edition starts on the 2nd of September and is comprised of 15 online meetings with lectures given by leading scholars from several countries. Participants can attend either some specific lectures of interest or the whole course. A certificate will be given to those who attend the whole course and complete the course assignments – if this is your case, please contact Prof. Tarcisio Saurin (saurin@ufrgs.br) to be included as a full participant. If your participation will be occasional, there is no need for registration. The course syllabus, timeline, and zoom link are available below.
Course title
Coping with Complexity in Socio-technical Systems: principles and practices for resilient performance
Coordinators: Tarcisio A. Saurin; ORCID: 0000-0003-2929-5888, saurin@ufrgs.br
Tor Olav Grotan; ORCID: 0000-0002-6863-7038, tor.o.grotan@sintef.no
Classes will be on-line with live meetings on Fridays 9 am – 12 am (Brasilia Time, BRT)
Zoom platform will be used for the live meetings on Fridays. There will be 15 live meetings from September to December, 2022. All course materials (recorded lectures, videos, papers, etc.) will be available on a Google Drive folder to be defined.
Zoom link for all classes: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89466510577?pwd=UUxFTVVyU01MVUxTY0NwTXlYMHpFdz09
Password: 141509
Course description
The course will address the theory and practice of Resilience Engineering (RE), which is a systems-oriented approach for coping with complexity in socio-technical systems. Although RE was originally focused on safety performance, its scope has evolved over time and it is nowadays concerned with resilient performance per se and has implications to several business dimensions such as productivity, reliability, and quality. The course covers the theoretical foundations of RE stemming from complexity science, followed by a presentation of approaches for the modelling of systems functioning and resilient performance. It also addresses practical applications of RE in several domains (e.g., healthcare, construction, oil and gas) and management sub-systems such as training and performance measurement.
Learning objectives
At the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Recognize terminology and key themes related to resilience, complexity, and safety;
- Differentiate the characteristics of RE in relation to other management approaches;
- Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of two system modelling tools (i.e., social network analysis and Functional Resonance Analysis Method);
- Identify opportunities for applying RE in different sectors such as construction and healthcare;
- Map attributes of complex socio-technical systems (e.g., diversity, variability) onto resilience principles and practices useful to cope with them; and
- Propose changes in existing safety and production management practices as to make them more aligned to the complexity of the systems where they are applied.
Assignment and weighting
The course includes only one assignment, namely the development of a paper reporting a case study of safety or production management practices from the RE viewpoint. Literature reviews will not be accepted. Students will self-organize in groups of no more than four people and seek a company that fits their objectives and is open to data collection. The specific practices studied should be chosen by each group and they may encompass practices other than those discussed during the course. The last two classes are reserved for the oral presentations of this assignment by each group, which will have a 30-minute slot: 20 minutes for presentation plus 10 minutes for questions and answers.
This paper is expected to be strong enough so as it can be published as a conference or journal paper in the year following the course. A draft of this paper must be delivered up to 31/01/2023, containing at least the following sections: title, abstract, keywords, introduction, literature review, and research method.
The oral presentation of the case study accounts for 25% of the overall grade, while the remaining 75% stems from the paper. The assessment of the paper will be based on the rubric below.
| Criteria/level | Potential as a journal paper | Potential only as a conference paper | No publication potential | Points |
| Originality | The topic is new/current or is an old topic that will be interpreted from a new perspective 2.0 pts | Well-known and widely studied topic but still relevant for incremental innovation 1.0 pts | Old topic that is no longer mainstream 0.0 pts | 2.0 |
| Quality of writing and text structure | Writing follows a logic structure and the paper is easily readable from the beginning to end 2.0 pts | Writing quality and structure are inconsistent across the paper sections, alternating clear and confusing portions 1.0 pts | Writing is confusing throughout the whole paper and ideas are disconnected from each other 0.0 pts | 2.0 |
| Introduction | Introduction is concise and convincing, clearly stating a research gap or research question 2.0 pts | Introduction presents some good ideas; however it is far from clear what is the research gap/question 1.0 pts | Introduction is long and repetitive, far from indicating a research gap/question 0.0 pts | 2.0 |
| Literature review section | Literature review is concise and clearly related to the paper scope 1.0 pts | Literature review is either too long/short or unrelated to the paper scope 0.5 pts | Literature review is too long/short and unrelated to the paper scope. 0.0 pts | 1.0 |
| Method | Data collection and analysis procedures are clearly described and framed within known research strategies (e.g., case study, survey). High quality data is likely to be produced. 2.0 pts | Data collection and analysis are described in very general terms and disconnected from research methods theories. High uncertainty regarding the quality of the data that will be produced. 1.0 pts | Either data collection or data analysis are described but not both. There is no reliable plan for the field work. 0.0 pts | 2.0 |
| References | Most references stem from journal papers published in the last three years. 1.0 pts | A minor portion of the references is from the last three years, and many sources are non-academic (e.g., blogs, books for practitioners, etc.). 0.5 pts | Mostly old references (more than 5 years ago), many references in languages other than English and few journal papers. 0.0 pts | 1.0 |
| Total points | 10.0 |
Course policies
Attendance of the on-line classes is mandatory and a frequency of at least 75% is required. Students must keep their cameras on during the classes and turn on their microphones only when speaking. Participation during the classes, while not graded, is strongly encouraged. Students are not expected to communicate in perfect English and they should not be afraid of making language mistakes. Plagiarism in the assignment will not be tolerated.
Course timeline
| Class | Date | Instructor | Topics |
| 1 | September 2 | Tarcisio Saurin (UFRGS) | Introduction to the course; What is complexity and guidelines for coping with it. Principles for the modelling of socio-technical systems. |
| 2 | September 9 | Ivonne Herrera (Research Council, Norway) | What is resilience (why, what, and how)? |
| 3 | September 16 | Oriol Artime (Italy)* and Flavio Fogliatto (UFRGS) | *1-hour REA/IEA webinar Modelling the structure and dynamics of socio-technical systems through network science. It will be followed by STERNA lecture |
| 4 | September 23 | Riccardo Patriarca (Sapienza University, Italy) and Gesa Praetorious (Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute and University of South-eastern Norway) | FRAM – underlying principles, application steps. |
| 5 | September 30 | Mike Rayo (Ohio State University) | Outmanoeuvring complexity |
| 6 | October 7 | Paulo Victor Carvalho and Jose Orlando Gomes (UFRJ), Alessandro Jatoba (UFF) | The Brazilian COVID-19 crisis: case studies on resilience engineering |
| 7 | October 14 | Éder Henriqson (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, PUCRS, Brazil) | Resilience engineering in distributed and integrated operations |
| 8 | October 21 | Tarcisio Saurin and Tor Olav Grotan | Supervision of case studies and paper development |
| 9 | October 28 | Kristine Storkersen (NTNU) and Sina Øyri (University of Stavanger) | *1.5 hours REA/IEA webinar Can regulations support resilient performance? It will be followed by discussion of papers in STERNA class |
| 10 | November 4 | Tor Olav Grotan (NTNU) | Training for operational resilience capabilities |
| 11 | November 11 | Trond Kongsvik (NTNU) | Balancing Safety-I and Safety-II in performance measurement and training |
| 12 | November 18 | Dayana Costa (UFBA) and Alejandro Frank (UFRGS) | Industry 4.0 and resilience engineering |
| 13 | November 25 | Carlos Formoso (UFRGS) | Built environment and resilience engineering |
| 14 | December 2 | Seminars (part I) | Presentations of case studies |
| 15 | December 9 | Seminars (part II) | Presentations of case studies |
About one week before each class, students will receive one or two papers for reading in preparation for the class. They are expected to bring at least one question or comment for discussion during the class. In addition, most instructors will post in advance to the class a video teaser (about 10 minutes) summarizing the main topics that will be covered during the class.