Expanding Fundamental Boundaries between Resilience and Survivability in Systems Engineering: A Literature Review

Abstract

The pressures of an everchanging world have impacted the ways in which service-based systems operate, along with their forms and boundaries. Resilience and survivability have been treated interchangeably when readying a system to remain true to its functions despite disturbances. Some situations prove the concepts may not always be the equivalent of the other, not even the consequence of the other. There may come scenarios where system components fail to adhere to certain predefined thresholds and cross a breaking point. It is therefore proposed in this study that systems can be survivable, instead of resilient, when they comply in time with the resurgence property. This property signifies the systematic behavior of overcoming a certain stagnation period and, after a time range, return as a transformed system with new functions and challenges. Through this study, it was detected that the symmetries between resilience and survivability are only superficial if systems suffer breakages after misconceiving the true causes of failure. Still, a lack of consensus among scientists and practitioners remains an issue when applying resilience and survivability in their own problems. Although workful, pushing to achieve a greater consensus would signify optimal performance in multifaceted systems involving technical, social, and economic challenges.