Helping you to use systems thinking to improve the climate resilience of places

Convening people

Co-designing solutions

Planning for places

Projects & Initiatives

A flexible three-stage approach to
co-designing solutions to complex issues

We champion a practical, integrated systems approach to driving sustainable performance in city regions. Our offering allows for a gradual onboarding to secure approach validation and internal buy-in, followed by prototype demonstration of systems-based solutions and capacity building. The first two stages are designed to prepare cities for a fully functioning systems modelling platform to support planning and investment decisions that will help them build sustainability and resilience.

How we Work

Tools and approaches

At Resilience Brokers, we are continuously working with our partners to improve and develop new approaches that embrace systems thinking and collaborative ideals to help unlock ‘system value’ and achieve greater resilience and flourishing in regions.

This section outlines some of the latest methods and approaches we’ve employed with partners and clients. If you’re interested in finding out more or trying out these, do get in touch with our team.

Systems Thinking

What is systems thinking?

The urgent transformational change required by regions to withstand the emerging global challenges can be achieved through systems thinking.

Systems thinking allows us to better understand the whole context of a complex challenge with all its connections and interrelationships. This approach helps to identify the root cause as well as the potential source of a potential opportunity, enabling data-informed, long-term and cost-effective decision making.

Systems thinking uses methods like causal loop diagrams (which show how problems rely on many interconnected ‘loops’ or factors) and tools such as dynamic models that show the feedback loops of a system. Feedback loops are the cause and effect between different variables (like amount of rainfall) or actions (like a planning decision to use natural vegetation to capture rainfall) that lead to a particular outcome (like reduced flood risk in a cost-effective manner).

Systems thinking, then, allows stakeholders to better comprehend how a system functions through the connections between different elements and components of a system — environmental, social, economic, or policy-related — and to understand the behaviour or interests these connections generate, by exploring different ‘what-if’ scenarios and different types of interventions.

How we use systems thinking

Resilience Brokers was set up to bring systems solutions to tackle systemic challenges. Our approach to systems thinking establishes collaborative environments and embraces inclusive planning to unlock shared value and the open-data movement, powered by pioneering systems modelling technology and advanced data science to drive sustainable performance.

Integrated-systems modelling for city-regions

We have prototyped and are applying an open-source, integrated human-ecology-economics systems platform that enables climate-compatible, risk sensitive planning, policy-making, investment and procurement for city-regions globally.

resilience.io is designed as a computer-based platform that provides an integrated systems view of a city-region. An analysis and decision-support tool for collaboration and resilience decision-making, the resilience.io platform combines computer representations of resource flows, human and business activities and infrastructure systems. The platform contains a growing library of process models (digital twins) of typical human, industrial and ecological systems, the relevant ones of which are used in a local instance to create a tailored integrated systems model for a city-region.

Users work in multi-disciplinary teams in regions to create integrated models, test scenarios including infrastructure, fiscal, policy and behaviour interventions and build an understanding of preferred options to achieve their own regional objectives.

It is designed to connect to many data sources (see Data Integration), including from earth observation satellites, government and private sector data, local sensor networks, smart phones, tablets and local survey data. This data is processed by the systems model and visualised to give an improved understanding of the human, economic and ecological systems within a region including how these are interlinked.

Prototype originally developed with Imperial College London and the Institute of Integrated Economic Research. More details including research papers can be found on resilience.io web pages.

Projects involving Integrated Systems Modelling

Sustainability Compass

Achieving sustainability in the built environment requires a systemic approach centred around simple solutions that achieve multiple sustainability objectives and deliver a highly sustainable return on investment. Resilience Brokers developed our Sustainability Compass as a bespoke tool to help clients meet their ambitions through a systemic approach centred around simple solutions that embed sustainability into masterplanning and the collaborative delivery process, which often involves multiple actors (e.g., engineering, cost consultants, architecture and urban design, as well as project stakeholders).

The Sustainability Compass tool fosters innovation and continuous improvement, using proven and industry-leading approaches that many stakeholders can contribute to; the tool allows a balance to be struck that avoids disengaging people or incentivising adverse unintended consequences from overly prescriptive performance targets or onerous monitoring requirements. The sustainability framework behind the compass is structured in response to central questions, with the project-specific answers, of: who (people – both end users and development partners), when (process –architectural work stages), where (place -i.e. site or land use class), what (performance targets – using standard indicators and assessment methods), and why(sustainability objectives). We then frame the objectives, usually into four thematic categories: Society, Economy, Environment, and Development. This brief identifies performance targets linked to all four sets of objectives, and cross-cutting examples of how they might be achieved in practice.

The visual metaphor of a compass pointing towards sustainability is used to integrate these components. Targets are informed by a holistic approach to sustainability that usually includes, for example, the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Social and Natural Capital, Low Carbon development, Biodiversity Net Gain, Quality of Life indices, and Whole Life Circular Economy principles. Reference projects and case studies and others examples are included within the brief to illustrate how they could be achieved.

For the actors involved with a project’s delivery, the Sustainability Compass and its accompanied sustainability framework set out masterplan-level sustainability objectives and assessment criteria, illustrative examples of possible approaches, and key processes and responsibilities (that can be updated dynamically in real time) expected of the design and delivery team to achieve the overall sustainability vision.

Example project: Ebbsfleet Central

Systems visualization and mapping

Resilience Brokers use a systems mapping approach to organise complex information and relationships into a map that is visual, aesthetically pleasing and useful for investigating challenges and thinking about interventions. A user can see direct relationships between key areas (nodes) and navigate around the map to find nodes that positively reinforce one another to create a virtuous circle (a self-reinforcing dynamic that supports a particular objective). The co-creation of a systems map helps communities, local government, businesses, academics and students to come together and tackle shared problems.

Open Data Infrastructure for Resilient Cities

The Open Data Infrastructure Roadmap (ODIR) for Cities is a strategic tool for the development of city-level open data infrastructure aligned with the City Disaster Resilience Scorecard and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 10 Essentials for urban resilience.

Resilience Brokers helped with the creation of the original document providing and selecting relevant case studies and data sources.

In the second phase of the development Resilience Brokers led a team to redesign the ODIR as a dynamic, non-linear online tool and make it available online.

We also re-configured it to consider city-level data infrastructure development for cities.

Open Data As A Key Enabler Of City Disaster Resilience

The Roadmap, Showcase and Guide to Open Data Infrastructure for City Resilience aim to help place data at the centre of another growing practice area that intersects with the smart cities sector – that of urban resilience and disaster risk reduction. It has a particular focus on open data as a key enabler of the kind of collaborative problem definition, risk analysis and response that resilience action planning requires. It also highlights how investments in open data-based approaches combined with the use of geospatial data and geographic information systems (GIS) can generate strong resilience dividends for city authorities.

A Resource For Urban Planners And Risk Managers

Open Data Infrastructure for City Resilience has been developed as a resource for city officials with responsibilities that include urban planning, risk reduction, resilience building and civil contingency. It has been designed, therefore, to help cities to integrate open data policies and infrastructure into their wider city data strategies and the development of their resilience action plans.