Generic quantitative formulation of resilience and contra-resilience for engineered system

When engineered systems enter the operational stage following design and development, they experience a variety of events that tend to affect their existence and performance. There are disruptive events that tend to affect the system adversely, leading to a loss of some kind; and there are constructive events that tend to affect the system positively, leading to a gain of some kind. The success of a system depends on how well it is able to handle both these types of events.;The concept of resilience enables systems to deal with disruptive events; however, there is a lack of generic conceptual and quantitative approaches to system resilience. This need has been addressed in this doctoral research by developing a generic conceptual and quantitative approach for system resilience, along with related metrics. A case study of the power outages during Hurricane Sandy has been used to illustrate the applicability of the resilience framework and metrics developed in this research. This work serves as a foundation for further research and application in the field of resilience.;There are no concepts that directly deal with constructive events - especially those that occur suddenly and are temporary in nature. Such events are typically neglected or overlooked, thus losing a valuable opportunity for system improvement. This gap is now filled by the definition of a new concept, contra-resilience, which is introduced as a dual concept to resilience. A generic conceptual and quantitative approach for contra-resilience has also been developed in this research, along with related metrics. Two case studies are used to illustrate the concept of contra-resilience and its applicability: one on stormwater management and another on customer management.