The ontology of resilience: The impossible trinities

Summary

To address many societal challenges it is important to improve the resilience of the food system. Research is needed to quantify and analyse the resilience of food systems in different contexts. Is it possible to have a standardised description of resilience of a food system with a measurable set of indicators? To address this question we started by developing an ontology of resilience for food systems based on literature study and using insights from semantic technologies. Our exploration identifies a number of impossible trinities in resilience research on which choices must be made in the definition and measurement of resilience. Our findings are relevant to policy decisions in choosing the proper ‘type’ of resilience and researchers to identify the relevant research problem.