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Abstract

In order to address the emerging global polycrisis, it is essential to develop quantitative indicators for estimating
resilience of essential bio-geophysical and social drivers of change. Such indicators are required to navigate the Anthropocene and to assess which actions increase the likelihood of achieving a safe and just operating space (SAJOS). In this paper, we propose a novel information-based resilience metric. We define it as the conditional probability of a system reaching a desired system state, e.g. a SAJOS, given initial conditions and an information set. This information set reflects knowledge about relevant ranges of bio-physical and socio-cultural system dynamics, boundaries and perturbations. The resulting resilience index is highly dependent on the available information about the system and its intrinsic action capacities. An increase in epistemic knowledge about the system does not necessarily result in enhanced resilience. It is still possible to envisage scenarios in which one could find oneself in a world that is capable of attaining a SAJOS in only a limited number of circumstances. Our proposed approach facilitates the operationalization and quantification of resilience in complex World-Earth system (WES) models.Resilience should be understood as being constrained by available information about the system, its internal processes, boundaries, and the capacity of the system to act in an uncertain future. This further implies the importance of making informed
investment decisions that balance improving system understanding (i.e. gaining information), increasing (anticipatory) capacities of action, and taking common-sense action to enhance resilience. Our information-based index can be applied to any kind of system. Since it answers the classical question of “resilience of what, to what” on a meta level, it allows moving beyond a highly specified and static notion of resilience, allowing for a wide range of application cases.