Resilience of living systems

Monday 23  - Friday 27 June 2025

De Bosrand, Ede, The Netherlands

Resilience is the capacity of a system to maintain or recover certain functions while undergoing shocks and stresses. It emerges from the many interactions between people and natural and/or artificial system components, and the capacity of people to adapt. Under the threat of climate change, national and international conflicts, habitat destruction, and biodiversity loss, we urgently need to understand and better manage the complexity and intertwining of the environmental and social systems on our planet. The time is here to help create a genuinely resilient society. We work on food security, flood protection, continuous energy supply, sustainable cities, management of (semi)natural systems, and so forth. All these topics involve aspects of resilience. We need to involve other people in our resilience thinking, and build a community of resilience thinkers. Hence this course: making the resilience community happen. We invite you to participate!

Scope

During this course, the participants become acquainted with different resilience concepts and their application from an interdisciplinary perspective. Accordingly, we will address how resilience theory can be used to tackle fundamental and societal issues from a socio-economic and bio-physical perspective and will provide a critical reflection on the relevance, use, and applicability of the concept of resilience. The objective of this course is thus to connect resilience concepts to viable applications by offering an efficacious analytical/computational approach. Participants will work in teams on the conceptualization and quantification of the resilience of a particular system. In the end, each team presents suggestions for a practical way to improve the resilience of the studied system.

In the course, Agent-Based Modelling will be used as the primary modelling tool. Hence, one day focuses on a practical introduction to programming in NetLogo for the construction of an Agent-Based Model to represent a modelled system. ABM stands out for its potential to model the variety of human sociality and behaviour.

We will focus particularly on:

1. Definitions, characteristics, and determinants of resilience and how this varies between scientific disciplines;
2. The identification of resilience-related problems;
3. The quantification of resilience, including modelling, measurement, analysis, and prediction, and options for management and governance of the systems’ resilience.

For whom is this course?
This course is primarily intended for PhD students, academics, R&D people from industry, and people working on the interface of academia and policy-making, interested in resilience and Agent-Based Models, regardless of specialization. We actively seek cross-fertilization between disciplines, and academia and industry.

Course set-up

The course is composed of:

1. Lectures
The course starts with an introductory lecture by an internationally renowned guest speaker in which a bird’s-eye view of resilience is given. The first part of most days, we discuss basic concepts of resilience. For introducing these basic concepts, different speakers will use a range of examples from different disciplines (e.g. socio-economic, medical, biophysical, ecological, etc., at different scales of integration (space, time, complexity)). Moreover, one day of the course is dedicated to introducing the fundamentals of programming an Agent-Based Model in NetLogo.

2. Working groups and Final Presentations
The second part of most days will involve group work in which each team works on a specific resilience-related case proposed by the team.  

The multidisciplinary groups will work on an assignment, taking the following aspects into account:
• Sociality of the people involved;
• Spatial and temporal scales;
• Complexity;
• Feedback mechanisms;
• Stability.

Among others, the following potential topics have been identified:
• Natural systems (e.g. a terrestrial system, an aquatic system);
• Farming systems (e.g. plant, animal or mixed);
• Landscapes;
• Food systems (the food chain);
• Microbial systems (soil, gut, etc.);
• Organ and organismal system (e.g. human, animal, plant and organs / systems within);
• The climate system.

However, participants are free to suggest other systems they are interested in, as long as it involves a resilience challenge.

Premilinary programme

Course organisers

• George van Voorn (Associate professor of Resilience Modelling)
• Peter Tamas, (Lecturer, Wageningen University & Research)
• Claudius van de Vijver (PE&RC PhD Programme Coordinator)
• Sanja Selaković (PE&RC PhD Programme Coordinator)

General information

Fees ¹

¹ The course fee includes accommodation, all meals, course materials, coffee/tea, and water. It does not include beverages in the bar.
² The Early-Bird Fee applies to anyone who REGISTERS ON OR BEFORE 28 APRIL 2025

Note:

• The Early-Bird policy is such that the moment of REGISTRATION (and not payment) is leading for determining the fee that applies to you.
• Please make sure that your payment is arranged within two weeks after your registration. Arrange your payment immediately if you register two weeks or less before the start of the course. 
• It is the participant's responsibility that the payment is correct and in time.

Cancellation Conditions

IMPORTANT: ALWAYS read the Cancellation conditions for PE&RC courses and activities.

Note: If you would like to cancel your registration, ALWAYS inform us. By NOT paying the participation fee, your registration is NOT automatically cancelled (and do note that you will be kept to the cancellation conditions)

More information

Dr. Sanja Selaković (PE&RC)
Phone: +31 (0) 317 480269
Email: sanja.selakovic@wur.nl

Dr. George van Voorn (Biometris)
Phone: +31 (0) 317 484616
Email: george.vanvoorn@wur.nl

Registration

To register, please enter your details below and click "Register".