Innovation for Resilience & Resilience of Innovation for Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

The chapter proposes an innovative framework for enhancing resilience against new risks/threats present in the “new risk landscape”, including polycrises and extreme threats (XTs). For mapping and exploring the risks, and ensuring resilience against them, the framework proposes clustering of the risks, as an alternative to the conventional approaches based on lists, on one side, and to the “all-risks” approaches, on the other side. For managing the risks and enhancing resilience, the framework proposes the integration of (a) Innovation for Resilience and (b) Resilience of Innovation (the IRRI concept), showing how to assess them both by applying indicators. For the resilience assessment of systems (e.g., systems, cities, infrastructures, etc.), the framework proposes use of the RL- and FL-curves. For assessing the resilience of innovation, it proposes the use of the S-curves. The application of IRRI to resilience of systems is illustrated by the case of extreme floods leading to disaster affecting a geographical region, multiple critical infrastructures present in that region and their functionality. Two scenarios were looked at: the one corresponding to a real historical event and the one assuming a similar but worse scenario in the future. Possible practical implementation of the proposed IRRI concept, in the BRI-context, is envisaged within the proposed the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) Resilience and Innovation Centers Network (BRaINnet). BRaINnet, as an ecosystem of innovation within the BRI and ZGCTA5, should be kicked-off by means of the pilot projects proposed here, by integrating and extending the applications presented in this book. This should lead to a broader IRRI- and BRI-related collaboration in Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia, and enhancing of the resilience against the risks in the “new global risk landscape”.