This report provides preliminary background on the topic of “Increasing Resilience of Earth Structures to Natural Hazards” assigned to WG1 of PIARC TC 4.3 as part of the 2020-2023 Work Program. This topic will be further developed as part of the 2020-2023 Work Cycle and is expected to be completed by two adittional documents for this topic: a Case Studies Report and a Full Report. This Literature Review provides general insight on how the concept of resilience is currently being considered among the academic and technical community. Adapting and refining this concept and determining how it applies to earth structures and natural hazards will be developed in the subsequent reports.

The production of this report was carried out in multiple phases. The first phase involved a cursory review and selection of relevant documents that address, directly or indirectly, the concept of resilience. The selected documents address the concept of resilience in various ways, from the most general meaning of the concept, to its specific application in road infrastructure. In the second phase, the selected documents had been analyzed in order to extract and highlight any factors that may impact resilience, any hazards that may be present, and any existing methodologies for the measure of resilience and corresponding indicators.

This literature review presents all relevant information, under appropriate subcategories, namely complex systems, infrastructures and assets. Case studies presented in this literature review have also been listed in Chapter 8.

In order to serve its function as preliminary background for future works, conclusions and reccommendations have been provided in Chapters 9 and 10 of the document. 

As a result of this literature review, it was concluded that resilience is not a well established or extensively studied concept and, therefore, an unambiguous definition valid for every technical field of interest does not exist. Moreover, no specific consideration to earth structures was found in reference documents when adressing the concept of resilience. This topic is expected to be further developed in future works planned by WG1 of PIARC TC 4.3 during the 2020-2023 working cycle, including coordination with other PIARC Technical Committees.