Biomimicry and Infrastructure Resilience

Life’s Principles are limitedly addressed by resilient infrastructure practice, which focuses on robustness and recovery; still, resilient infrastructure theory aligns closely with the Life’s Principles framework. The most frequently aligned core concepts include adaptability, flexibility, and agility, which we propose are overarching themes in resilient infrastructure theory and an ‘end goal’ of resilient infrastructure. Resilient infrastructure design shows dominance in certain Life’s Principles such as ‘evolve to survive,’ ‘adapt to changing conditions,’ and ‘be locally attuned and responsive;’ however, the remaining principles also are addressed in part, and one—‘be resource efficient’—is more commonly evoked in practice than implied by analysis.

Where the alignments between the frameworks provide opportunities for recognized growth, the identified contradictions and gaps provide opportunities for innovation. Infrastructure managers should address the contradictions between resilient infrastructure practice and Life’s Principles in design by incorporating more core concepts that show alignment. This will expand the dominant infrastructure design strategy beyond fail-safe and robust infrastructure. Furthermore, infrastructure managers can be innovative to fill the gaps between frameworks. Not every core concept will be able to address every life principle; however, exploration of these gaps may prove that the core concepts are not binary classifications but a continuum, which would strengthen a tradeoff analysis. Resilience can only be achieved through an approach that recognizes complexity, deep uncertainty, and interrelatedness of components. This means that resilient infrastructure design should seek to optimize not one but all Life’s Principles through satisficed solutions.

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