Reliability and resilience engineering
Reliability and resilience engineering studies how systems fail, how failures can be prevented and how systems absorb, adapt and recover from disruption. It addresses both technical components and the organisations that operate them. Critical Infrastructure stewards this page for the Nexus Consortium.
- Institution
- The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
- Service level
- R0: information and enquiries
Reliability model
GCRI · Reliability and resilience… · Run R-3730
Dependency graph
nodes: assets · edges: dependencies
Failure modes
| N3 | 8811 | 8 | Critical |
| N4 | 5317 | 25 | Normal |
| N5 | 4984 | 14 | Normal |
| N6 | 5367 | 42 | Normal |
Cascade size under removal
GCRI · Reliability modelReliability model, in outline: domain structure with placeholder names and illustrative values, not a record.
The short answer.
Reliability and resilience engineering studies how systems fail, how failures can be prevented and how systems absorb, adapt and recover from disruption. Resilience engineering identifies critical components and recovery bottlenecks across connected systems. In the Nexus Consortium, Critical Infrastructure stewards its canonical page, and 5 other platforms apply it, including Energy Nexus and Systemic Risk Management.
Systemic exposure in the Gulf.
Where people and networks concentrate, the exposure through which shocks travel between systems, shown for the Gulf as an example geography for this subject.
What reliability and resilience engineering covers.
- 01
Core methods
failure modes and effects analysis; fault tree analysis; reliability block diagrams; resilience metrics; maintenance optimisation; post-incident analysis.
- 02
Data and instruments
failure and maintenance records; incident databases; condition monitoring data; component test data; operator logs.
- 03
Validation
Reliability predictions are compared with field failure data. Exercises and post-event reviews check whether recovery performed as planned.
- 04
Limits
Common-cause failures and rare events are hard to estimate from limited data. Human and organisational factors resist quantification.
- 05
Use in risk decisions
Resilience engineering identifies critical components and recovery bottlenecks across connected systems. It informs redundancy, spares and restoration priorities.
Resilience engineering extends reliability practice to whole systems.
| Reference | What it sets |
|---|---|
| ISO 22301 | Business continuity management |
| IEC 60300 dependability management | Reliability and availability |
| Sendai target D | Damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services |
Absorb, adapt, recover.
Reliability asks how often a component fails; resilience asks how a system performs during and after disruption. The resilience curve (performance against time through a disruption) makes recovery speed and degraded performance explicit. Interdependent networks need joint restoration planning, because one network's recovery waits on another's.
- Measure recovery time and degraded service, not only failure probability.
- Plan restoration order across networks.
- Test assumptions with exercises.
- Applications on Critical Infrastructure and Energy Nexus.
Platforms that apply this method.
Who maintains this page.
Critical Infrastructure stewards reliability and resilience engineering: it keeps this description current and reviews how the method is applied across the platforms.
Terms used on this page.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Recovery time objective | The target time within which a service or system must be restored after disruption. |
| Post-incident review | A structured review of an incident's causes and the changes needed to prevent recurrence. |
| Graceful degradation | Continuing to provide a reduced service when part of a system fails. |
| Learning review | A post-incident review focused on causes and improvement rather than blame. |
Where this page's references lead.
The bodies and documents this page is read against. Status and editions change; each link goes to the issuing body.
Where this page leads across the Consortium.
- Resilience engineering for energy systemsGCRIApplied in Energy Nexus.
- Reliability and resilience engineeringGCRIApplied in Systemic Risk Management.
- Resilience engineering for infrastructureGCRIApplied in Critical Infrastructure.
- Resilience engineering for digital servicesGCRIApplied in Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience.
- Reliability and resilience engineering for payments and market infrastructureGRAApplied in Payments and Market Infrastructure.
- Reliability and resilience engineering at Financial Cyber and Operational ResilienceGRAApplied in Financial Cyber and Operational Resilience.
Questions and answers.
Why does one institution host every method page?
How do I suggest a correction to a method page?
Around GCRI.
Start with an enquiry.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.