Constructs in infrastructure resilience framing – from components to community services and the built and human infrastructures on which they rely

This article describes five constructs for framing infrastructure resilience estimation. These constructs range from the consideration of a single component to a community service provided through a set of buildings whose functionality relies on interdependent supporting lifelines. A key aim is to explore how the construct that is adopted affects resilience understanding. It discusses the value of reframing the resilience computation around services that are provided by built environments rather than around the built systems themselves. The built environment would provide little in the way of services if not for human involvement and other needed resources. A construct for framing resilience is expanded to incorporate the role of humans as infrastructure, as well as permanent and consumable limiting resources, in creating service capacity. Taking a service-based viewpoint induces a change in perspective with rippling impact. It affects the choice of metrics for measuring resilience, adaptation strategies to include in assessment, baselines for comparison, and elements of the built environment to incorporate in the evaluation. It necessitates consideration of socio-technical concerns. It also brings hidden issues of inequity to the foreground. This article suggests that underlying many resilience studies is an implicit construct for framing resilience, and explores how the construct affects and enables resilience understanding.