Driven by a need to prepare for and recover from high consequence shocks on various social, information, and infrastructure systems, resilience has evolved as a concept dealing with how a complex system operates under stress. This is particularly relevant for the management of major risks. Resilience calls for a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on social sciences as well as natural science, and may lend itself to a variety of methodological approaches by which system resilience may be assessed. It has also been used as a concept to assess the capacity of economies and financial systems to withstand major shocks.
Governments worldwide increasingly realise that the systemic threats afflicting modern societies, such as natural hazards, ageing population, and global migration, are compounded by their potential to disrupt interconnected cyber, information, societal, and infrastructural systems with lasting consequences. The OECD, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (EC-JRC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have agreed to work together in a co-operative effort to learn from each other, share resources, and complement each other's activities