Redundancy means having more than one way to do something important. It's the spare key, the second water tank, the neighbour who also knows how to open the hall. When systems run too lean, things work fine until something breaks. Then suddenly there's no capacity left. Building resilience means building in deliberate overlap that allows a system to absorb disruption and keep functioning.
Think of it as foresight, not waste. You build backup where it matters most. You skip it where extras just add clutter.
Start by mapping dependencies. What relies on a single point of failure? What happens if a key person, resource, or connection breaks? The answers reveal where you need alternatives. This might mean multiple evacuation routes, several communication systems to reach neighbours, more than one person trained in emergency response, or backup power sources for essential facilities.
Redundancy also creates space for innovation. When you know there's backup, you can test new approaches without putting everything at risk. But spare capacity needs attention. Unused systems degrade, so regular maintenance and practice keep them viable.
Designing redundancy means balancing the cost of preparedness against the cost of being stretched thin. Resilient systems accept a small efficiency trade-off because when disruption comes, they still have options.
Something to chew on:
Where could a small amount of built-in redundancy prevent a larger problem in your system?
Resilience Bites offers weekly insights from the Australian Resilience Centre, drawn from decades of work alongside communities across Australia and internationally. Each Bite explores an aspect of resilience and closes with a reflective question to chew on.
Across the series we'll explore themes that shape resilience in practice, including place, patterns, networks, leadership, learning, feedbacks, thresholds and the deeper work of change.
This series is for people working in communities, landscapes, systems and change. It will help you explore key resilience concepts, apply them in practice and build our collective capacity to create resilient futures.
To learn more about the Australian Resilience Centre and explore our work and services, please visit https://www.ausresilience.com.au/
To read published Bites, please visit https://resiliencebites.ausresilience.com.au/
