Search Results (30)

How does the complex, adaptive, and autonomous organization of life emerge from the laws of physics and information? This review argues that the answer lies in a convergent set of universal organizational principles that constitute a physical and informational grammar of the living. Living systems are dissipative structures that achieve organizational closure—materially and energetically open, yet causally closed—thereby attaining genuine autonomy and agency. Their architecture exhibits fractal and modular scaling laws that maximize energy flow, robustness, and evolvability under universal physical constraints. Critically, organisms operate at critical transitions—zones of controlled instability where fluctuations amplify information processing, transforming noise into adaptive signal. This self-organized criticality enables functional degeneracy, relational redundancy, and evolutionary antifragility. Cognition emerges as a distributed process of active inference, operating through a predictive–corrective cycle that integrates perception, action, and learning under the Free Energy Principle. From molecular networks to ecosystems, the same physico-informational grammars unfold recursively, revealing a deep organizational holography: the principles of organization are replicated across scales. Evolution under the Law of Increasing Functional Information is not random drift, but a directional expansion of functional complexity—a thermodynamic gradient towards greater agency. This synthesis challenges biological exceptionalism: the trajectory from thermodynamics to cognition is continuous, physically constrained, and potentially inevitable. Life does not violate physical laws—it fulfills them in regimes of high informational complexity, instantiating fundamental principles in self-organized architectures capable of prediction, memory, and purpose. The objective of this work is to articulate how the synthesis of these principles not only unifies physics and biology, but also illuminates the profound continuity between thermodynamics, chemistry, informational constraints, organization, and the mind. Full article

The Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly embedded in critical infrastructures across healthcare, energy, transportation, and industrial automation, yet its pervasiveness introduces substantial security and resilience challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive review of recent advances in IoT resilience, focusing on developments reported between 2022 and 2025. A layered taxonomy is proposed to organize resilience strategies across hardware, network, learning, application, and governance layers, addressing adversarial, environmental, and hybrid stressors. The survey systematically classifies and compares more than forty representative studies encompassing deep learning under adversarial attack, generative and ensemble intrusion detection, hardware and protocol-level defenses, federated and distributed learning, and trust and governance-based approaches. A comparative analysis shows that while adversarial training, GAN-based augmentation, and decentralized learning improve robustness, their evidence is often confined to specific datasets or attack scenarios, with limited validation in large-scale deployments. The study highlights challenges in benchmarking adaptivity, cross-layer integration, and explainable resilience, concluding with future directions for creating antifragile IoT systems that can self-heal and adapt to evolving cyber–physical threats. Full article

The convergence of Lean manufacturing principles with Industry 4.0 has yielded significant operational improvements, yet the emerging paradigm of Industry 6.0—characterized by antifragile, autonomous, and sustainable systems—demands a fundamental rethinking of existing analytical frameworks. This paper introduces the Industry 6.0 Lean Analytics (I6LA) Framework, a novel meta-theoretical approach that integrates Lean principles with the core concepts of Industry 6.0. By systematically analyzing the limitations of current Lean analytics in the context of Industry 6.0 requirements, we identify critical gaps in areas such as system resilience, AI-driven autonomy, and circular economy integration. The I6LA Framework addresses these gaps through four new theoretical pillars: Antifragile Lean Systems Theory, generative AI-Orchestrated Value Streams, Circular–Regenerative Analytics, and Hyper-Connected Ecosystem Integration. This research provides a new set of mathematical models for measuring antifragility, generative orchestration efficiency, and circularity, offering a comprehensive analytical toolkit for the next generation of manufacturing. The framework’s primary contribution is a paradigm shift from optimizing stable, human-in-the-loop systems to managing dynamic, autonomous ecosystems that thrive on volatility and are regenerative by design. This paper provides both a robust theoretical foundation and practical implementation guidance for organizations navigating the transition to Industry 6.0. Full article

On 10 March 1933, an earthquake of roughly 6.4 on the Richter scale (retrospectively estimated) hit the City of Long Beach, California, and the counties surrounding it. Seismically, the quake was of moderate magnitude. However, to this day it remains one of the most destructive quakes in California history in terms of structural damage and fatalities, largely because of faults in building construction of the time that resulted in widespread collapses resulting from earth movement. This article tells the story of the quake itself in full detail; examines its role in the passage of the Field Act, tracing out how that act has impacted earthquake-resistant building design policy, law and practice in California and beyond; assesses the way in which the earthquake altered the trajectory of earthquake science; and details the economic policy response to the quake and the short-term stimulative effects this had on Long Beach and Southern California economies (referred to here as “Disaster Keynesianism”). While there is a large historiographical literature on the Long Beach quake and some of its singular impacts, this research is unique in that it describes and analyzes impacts across multiple dimensions and puts them in the context of contemporary literature on disaster studies, economic analysis, and the history of science, all based on extensive archival research. The paper concludes by positing that the policy, technical and economic response to the Long Beach earthquake represented a sort of “high modern” example of socially and institutionally constructed “disaster” that firmly set in place the notion that “natural disaster” could be managed and ultimately prevented by material and technical means. It is argued that such a view is still contained within more current and broader concepts of “Resilience” and “Anti-fragility”. Full article

Global climate change exerts a systematic threat to the yield stability, nutritional quality, pest and disease control, and supply chain security of the fruit and vegetable industry via multiple ways, including altering temperature, carbon dioxide concentration, rainfall, ocean acidification, and soil deterioration. To tackle climate change, actions like carbon pricing and low-carbon technologies not only promote emission reduction but also impose pressure and economic difficulties on farmers, producers, logistics, transport, etc. This review, from an integrated view of “policy–technology relationship”, begins by summarizing the impacts of the aforementioned climate factors and systematically analyzes the influence of climate, policy, and technology on the fruit and vegetable industry. The research shows that the solution lies in the strategic cooperation between policies and technologies: technological innovation (e.g., controlled environment agriculture) offers potential for establishing resilient production systems, yet its successful implementation largely relies on forward—looking policy support and infrastructure investment, particularly the initial investment in renewable energy. Therefore, this paper puts forward an integrated framework intended for designing “resilient” fruit and vegetable systems, offering new theoretical foundations and path options for the coordinated advancement of climate mitigation and global nutrition security goals. This work offers an integrated framework for designing antifragile fruit and vegetable systems, harmonizing climate mitigation (SDG 13) with nutritional security (SDG 2) through strategically coordinated policy and technology interventions. Full article

This paper introduces cognitive adaptivity as a novel framework for addressing human factors in cybersecurity during the Industry 5.0–6.0 transition, with a focus on hard-to-abate industries where digital transformation intersects sustainability constraints. While the integration of IoT, automation, digital twins, and artificial intelligence expands industrial efficiency, it simultaneously exposes organizations to increasingly sophisticated social engineering and AI-powered attack vectors. Traditional resilience-based models, centered on recovery to baseline, prove insufficient in these dynamic socio-technical ecosystems. We propose cognitive adaptivity as an advancement beyond resilience and antifragility, defined by three interrelated dimensions: learning, anticipation, and human–AI co-evolution. Through an in-depth case study of the ceramic value chain, this research develops a conceptual model demonstrating how organizations can embed trust calibration, behavioral evolution, sustainability integration, and systemic antifragility into their cybersecurity strategies. The findings highlight that effective protection in Industry 6.0 environments requires continuous behavioral adaptation and collaborative intelligence rather than static controls. This study contributes to cybersecurity literature by positioning cognitive adaptivity as a socio-technical capability that redefines the human–AI interface in industrial security. Practically, it shows how organizations in hard-to-abate sectors can align cybersecurity governance with sustainability imperatives and regulatory frameworks such as the CSRD, turning security from a compliance burden into a strategic enabler of resilience, competitiveness, and responsible digital transformation. Full article

Collaborative business ecosystems (CBEs) are increasingly exposed to disruptive events (e.g., pandemics, supply chain breakdowns, cyberattacks) that challenge organizational adaptability and value creation. Traditional approaches to resilience and robustness often fail to capture the full range of systemic responses. This study introduces a unified mathematical framework to evaluate four crisis response modes—plasticity, resilience, transformative resilience, and antifragility—within complex adaptive networks. Grounded in complex systems and collaborative network theory, our model formalizes both internal organizational capabilities (e.g., adaptability, learning, innovation, structural flexibility) and strategic interventions (e.g., optionality, buffering, information sharing, fault-injection protocols), linking them to pre- and post-crisis performance via dynamic adjustment functions. A composite performance score is defined across four dimensions (Innovation, Contribution, Prestige, and Responsiveness to Business Opportunities), using capability–strategy interaction matrices, weighted performance change functions, and structural transformation modifiers. The sensitivity analysis and scenario simulations enable a comparative evaluation of organizational configurations, strategy impacts, and phase-transition thresholds under crisis. This indicator-based formulation provides a quantitative bridge between resilience theory and practice, facilitating evidence-based crisis management in networked business environments. Full article

Recent studies document a disappointingly low impact of resilience interventions and policies. This prompts us to revisit the formation of perceived individual resilience using a country-representative sample of 1500 adults. Our study explores how this perception is shaped by family resilience, community resilience, and several control variables like age, gender, risk aversion, and the perception of immediate environmental safety. Unlike traditional methods, we employ the PLS-PM methodology and WarpPLS 7.0 software. Our key findings document non-linear dynamics with varying degrees of magnitude, significance, and effect sizes. The three dimensions of family resilience (social trust, shared beliefs and support, and family organization and interaction) are the most significant predictors of community resilience. These non-linear relationships might explain occasional declines in individual resilience, linking our findings to those of previous studies. We contend that resilience policies and interventions are not unlike risk management, and therefore policymakers should be aware of diminishing marginal returns. Full article

Tourism ecological resilience (TER) is an important indicator of the healthy and sustainable development of the tourism industry, which provides a new analytical perspective for the anti-fragility and tourism ecological security of the tourism industry. This study takes 31 provinces in China as the research area, constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system of TER based on the theory of evolutionary resilience, and uses a comprehensive evaluation index, GIS spatial analysis technology, kernel density estimation, Dagum–Gini coefficient, and other research methods to analyze the spatial and temporal evolution of China’s TER from 2010 to 2022 and the spatial distribution pattern of three dimensions of DPC-ARC-OIC. The results show that (1) In the process of time evolution, the ecological resilience of tourism in China continues to increase, and from 2010 to 2022, China’s TER first increased and then decreased, with an average annual growth rate of 1.47%, among which Yunnan and Jiangxi provinces increased significantly. (2) In the process of spatial evolution, there is an obvious spatial gap in tourism ecological resilience. From 2010 to 2022, China’s TER generally presents a pattern of “high in the east and low in the west, high in the south and low in the north”, forming a hierarchical spatial structure with Beijing and Shanghai as the “dual cores”, decreasing to the periphery. (3) There are obvious spatial differences in the three dimensions of DPC, ARC, and OIC. The DPC of the economically developed regions is higher than that of the economically less developed regions; the ARC fluctuates greatly due to the environmental vulnerability and economic level of the western region, and the OIC, as a whole, rises and presents a multi-polar distribution. (4) The overall difference in China’s TER fluctuates and increases, and regional differences have always been dominant, so it is necessary to take systematic measures according to local conditions to help improve the resilience of the tourism ecosystem and the sustainable development of regional tourism. This study can enrich the theoretical research of TER, but it mainly uses provincial macro data for analysis. It still needs to be strengthened to depict regional heterogeneity characteristics to provide Chinese practice for studying TER. Full article

This study presents a novel approach for developing a sustainable property tax system, aimed at enhancing economic stability and promoting sustainable regional development. This research employs a phenomenological methodology, which includes a comprehensive review of the scientific and practical literature, and their critique and synthesis. The authors also draw on their experiences with the tax system transformation within their own country. This study explores the integration of a consensual governance approach and the concept of antifragility into the complex issue of property taxation. The primary objective is to design a property tax management model that not only fulfills its economic functions, but also fosters an antifragile taxpayer society, contributing to the creation of a resilient and socially cohesive community. The findings demonstrate that a consensual and transparent property tax system, actively involving local stakeholders in decision-making processes, not only reduces resistance to tax reforms but also strengthens a community’s ability to adapt to economic fluctuations. By integrating the principles of good governance and sustainable development, the proposed model promotes socio-economic stability and provides a flexible framework that can accommodate diverse stakeholders needs, ultimately benefiting the broader community through enhanced social cohesion and long-term sustainability. Full article

Background: Frailty is increasingly recognized as a significant health concern, particularly due to its association with cardiovascular pathologies. This study aims to examine how vascular endothelial dysfunction, a known premorbid stage in the pathophysiology of cardiovascular diseases, contributes to the link between cardiovascular illness and frailty. Methods: The inclusion criteria allowed us to focus on original clinical research articles published in English between January 2014 and January 2024, which reported quantitative assessments of the relationship between frailty and vascular endothelial dysfunction. Excluded from the study were systematic literature reviews, meta-analyses, editorials, conference articles, theses, methodological articles, and studies using animal or cell culture models. Searches were conducted of electronic databases, including Scopus, ScienceDirect, and Medline, up to 22 January 2024. The risk of bias was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute’s critical appraisal tools. The methods used to present and synthesize the results involved data extraction and categorization based on biomolecular and clinical findings of endothelial dysfunction. Results: Following the application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 29 studies were identified. Vascular endothelial dysfunction was associated with increased frailty phenotypes, and we also identified SGLT-2 inhibitors’ potential role as an anti-fragility treatment that affects endothelial dysfunction. This study found that the physical and biomolecular markers of endothelial dysfunction are associated with frailty measures and have predictive value for incident frailty. Furthermore, some studies have shown inflammation to have an impact on endothelial dysfunction and frailty, and an innovative age-related chronic inflammation measure has been proven to predict frailty scores. Conclusions: The current evidence suggests an association between endothelial dysfunction and frailty, highlighting the need for further research to elucidate the underlying mechanisms. Full article

Within the vast landscape of the Built Environment, where challenges of uncertainty abound, this paper ventures into a detailed exploration of antifragile planning. Antifragility, a concept rooted in the capacity of systems to not only withstand but also thrive in the face of volatility, stands as a beacon of resilience amidst the uncertainties of the Anthropocene. The paper offers a systematic examination of antifragile planning, specifically by concentrating on uncertainty as one of its key theoretical tenets and by exploring the implications of these principles within the context of the Anthropocene. After offering a systematic and comprehensive review of the literature, the analysis delves into several important themes in antifragile planning, including the recognition of limited predictive reliability, critiques of conventional responses to shocks such as urban resilience and smart cities, and the strategic elimination of potential fragilizers through a unique planning methodology. Furthermore, the paper discusses three key arguments challenging the efficacy of antifragility: the systemic approach, the classification of responses to perturbations, and the validity of adaptivity and optionality theses. Specifically, the gaps identified in the antifragile planning methodology reveal its shortcomings in addressing the complexity of cities, its failure to recognize the variety of responses to shocks and perturbations, and its neglect of broader urban relationalities, especially in relation to climate-induced uncertainty. Thus, it is asserted that antifragility remains urbocentric. For these reasons, the paper contends that rectifying the gaps detected in antifragility is necessary to address the uncertainty of the Anthropocene. By aligning largely with emerging posthumanist planning strategies, the paper emphasizes the significance of adopting a proactive approach that goes beyond merely suppressing natural events. This approach involves fostering urban intelligence, contextualizing urban materialities within broader planetary dynamics, and embracing exploratory design strategies that prioritize both the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of planning. Full article

During the COVID-19 crisis, organizations had to demonstrate organizational resilience (OR) to continue to carry out their missions. We conducted qualitative research to identify the factors that contributed to the OR of police and penitentiary institutions in French-speaking Switzerland, in terms of their operations and management. The modes of action and crisis responses of these emergency services, regularly confronted with crises and particularly impacted during the pandemic, are worthy of attention. To this end, we synthesized the OR factors that are frequently identified in both theoretical and empirical review articles and identified four theoretical conceptualizations: (a) resilience engineering, (b) ecological resilience (these two are the most widely used), (c) a third way situating resilience at an intermediate stage in a metamodel representing the evolution of organizations from a fragile to antifragile state, and (d) a conceptualization focusing on the temporal dimension of OR. Based on the results of 25 semi-structured interviews with executives from cantonal police forces and prisons, we present what we consider to be the key levers in a three-phase resilience process (upstream, during, and after the shock): anticipatory and proactive organizational culture, information management and communication, liminal leadership practices, social and environmental practices, agility-enhancing governance practices, and learning capabilities. Our results largely confirm that these parameters significantly contributed to the OR of the institutions in question. They also enable us to propose winning configurations of factors that can increase the potential for OR. Full article

The implementation of health and care services within rural communities requires necessary sensitivity to the unique facets of rural places. Often, rural service implementation is executed with inappropriate frameworks based on assumptions derived from urban centres. To understand the characteristics of rural communities that can facilitate successful program implementation better, ethnographic accounts of rural health and care services were compiled in rural communities within Canada, Australia, and Iceland. Ethnographic accounts are presented in the first and third person, with an accompanying reflexive analysis immediately following these accounts. Antifragility was the guiding concept of interest when investigating rural implementation environments, a concept that posits that a system can gain stability from uncertainty rather than lose integrity. These ethnographic accounts provide evidence of antifragile operators such as optionality, hybrid leadership, starting small, nonlinear evaluation, and avoiding suboptimisation. It is shown that the integration of these antifragile operators allows programs to function better in complex rural systems. Further, the presence of capable individuals with sufficient knowledge in several disciplines and with depth in a single discipline allows for innovative local thinking initiatives. Full article

Interpersonal violence is the leading cause of death in adolescents. Hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs) address the emotional and behavioral sequelae of assault and homicide. Few studies have been published on pediatric HVIPs, and no study offers a conceptualization model for treatment approaches. This paper demonstrates the use of empirically supported practices by outlining the services provided and subsequent treatment trajectory of an adolescent receiving care from an HVIP at a Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center. This case study follows the Case Study Report (CARE) guidelines and is the first to demonstrate the use of intensive case management, Psychological First Aid (PFA), and Skills for Psychological Recovery (SPR) in the treatment of an adolescent presenting to the emergency department (ED) due to assault associated with bullying. Through the use of these treatment approaches to address symptoms of posttraumatic stress, the patient moved from physical recovery to posttraumatic growth. Assessment and trauma-informed treatment suggestions are provided to support evidence-based practices within HVIPs. Full article