The term resilience has been used for many decades in very different fields of knowledge. In the electricity sector, the negative impact of natural and anthropogenic risks on critical infrastructure has led governments, regulators, utilities and other stakeholders to formalize a framework to monitor and improve resilience. In essence, this formalization aims to define strategies to improve the ability of a critical infrastructure to anticipate and prepare for critical situations, to absorb the impacts of risks, prevent service deterioration to the point of failure, to respond and recover quickly from disruptions, and to make adaptations that strive to provide essential services in a new condition.

Despite numerous attempts to define resilience by organizations around the world in the energy and power engineering communities, there is still no universally accepted definition because resilience is a multidimensional and dynamic concept. Resilience is not simply ‘the ability to bounce back’ after a failure; an organization that seeks to be highly resilient must also focus continually on aspects related to the potential for multiple failures at all levels, to identify opportunities to improve its emergency preparedness and operational practices before, during and after major disruptions and service disruptions, as well as improvements based on lessons learned from past events.

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