How do we build resilient systems in an age of disruption? Our special issue explores groundbreaking research across supply chain, infrastructure, urban planning, digital systems and AI, disaster management, energy, governance and resilience assessment methodologies.
Resilience has become a critical concept for understanding and managing complex, interconnected socio-technical-environmental (STE) systems under stress. In an era marked by compounding crises—from pandemics and cyberattacks to climate extremes and geopolitical shocks—new approaches are needed to plan for contingencies, design for resilience, and manage systemic disruptions. This special issue explores how resilience can be governed, engineered, and institutionalized in light of uncertainty, risk, and cascading failures across sectors and scales.
This issue is based on contributions to the 2026 International Conference on Resilient Systems (ICRS), which will be held from 23–25 March 2026 in Delft, the Netherlands. The conference is hosted by the 4TU.Centre for Resilience Engineering (4TU.RE) – a collaboration between Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Twente, and Wageningen University & Research – and is organized in cooperation with the Singapore-ETH Centre, ETH Zürich, and Technical University of Darmstadt. The ICRS serves as a global platform for researchers working on the design, analysis, and governance of resilient systems in an increasingly interconnected world.
The special issue is planned in JCCM:
The Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management (JCCM), with an Impact Factor of 4.1, is a leading international journal publishing high-quality research on crisis prevention, planning, response, and recovery. It focuses on the practical and theoretical challenges of managing threats and uncertainties in both the public and private sectors. JCCM is particularly interested in analyses and case studies that address real-world applications, forward-looking scenario planning, and governance under conditions of contingency and crisis.
We invite original research articles, conceptual frameworks, methodological advances, and well-documented case studies that contribute to one or more of the following areas:
- Crisis governance in interconnected systems
- Scenario-based resilience planning and design
- Systemic risk assessment and early warning
- Institutional and organizational resilience
- Turnaround strategies in the aftermath of systemic disruption
- Crisis learning, adaptation, and transformation
- Engineering resilience into critical infrastructure
- Social-ecological resilience and community-based approaches
- Multi-level governance and cross-sectoral coordination
- Digitalization, AI, and complexity in crisis response
- Evaluation and metrics for resilience and recovery
Submission and Review Timeline (planned)
- 23–25 March 2026: Presentation at ICRS conference in Delft (optional but encouraged)
- 15 May 2026: Submission deadline for full papers
- 15 May – 1 August 2026: Peer-review process
- 1 August – 1 October 2026: Revisions and editorial decisions
- Late 2026 / Early 2027: Publication
Submission Guidelines
All submissions must follow the formatting and referencing requirements of the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management. Manuscripts should be submitted through the journal’s online submission system and clearly marked for consideration in the “ICRS 2026 Special Issue on Resilience.”
Corresponding Guest Editors
- Christian Reuter, Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC), Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany
- Professor in Computer Science, works in the area cybersecurity, crisis management, and human-computer interaction. His work focuses on crisis informatics, information warfare, and usable security. He contributes to resilience by developing adaptive tools for disaster response and public safety. These innovations help systems and communities recover from disruptions
Guest Editorial Board
- Tina Comes, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
- Professor in Decision Theory & ICT for Resilience and the Scientific Director for the 4TU.Centre for Resilience Engineering. She has been determined to better understand decision-making of individuals and groups in the context of risk and crises. Her research on resilience combines behavioural insights and value considerations from the field with computational models and AI.
- Remco Dijkman, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands
- Professor of Information Systems, specializes in data-driven process optimization and resilience in complex systems. His research focuses on real-time monitoring of supply chains and other logistic operations, facilitating decision making as well as rapid adaptation and recovery of disruptive events. By aligning mathematical models with real-world data and processes, he enhances operational efficiency as well as system resilience during and after disruptive events.
- Jonas Jörin, Singapore‑ETH Centre, Singapore
- Directs the Future Resilient Systems (FRS) program. His research explores human-environmental processes, focusing on individual resilience in the context of hazards. Funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation, his work aims to enhance understanding of how people adapt to environmental challenges and disasters.
- Max Mühlhäuser, Telecooperation Lab, Technical University of Darmstadt
- Professor of Computer Science; within resilience engineering he specializes in intelligent human-centered environments. His research integrates adaptive networks, proactive intelligent systems, cybersecurity, and immersive human interaction to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructures. By addressing challenges like dynamic digital twins and trust-based security & privacy, he advances robust, adaptive systems for future smart cities and critical operations.
- Maria Pregnolato, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
- Associate Professor, specializes in infrastructure resilience and flood risk management, focusing on flooding impacts on roads, bridges, and buildings. As an EPSRC Fellow, she investigated extreme flooding effects on bridges using hydrodynamic and network modelling. Her recent work explores structural health monitoring and Digital Twins, as well as crisis management and disaster risk reduction.