Beyond Redundancy: Toward Agile Resilience in Optical Networks to Overcome Unpredictable Disasters

Resilience in optical networks has traditionally relied on redundancy and pre-planned recovery strategies, both of which assume a certain level of disaster predictability. However, recent environmental changes such as climate shifts, the evolution of communication services, and rising geopolitical risks have increased the unpredictability of disasters, reducing the effectiveness of conventional resilience approaches. To address this unpredictability, this article introduces the concept of agile resilience, which emphasizes dynamic adaptability across multiple operators and layers. We identify key requirements and challenges, and present enabling technologies for the realization of agile resilience. Using a field-deployed transmission system, we demonstrate rapid system characterization, optical path provisioning, and database migration within six hours. These results validate the effectiveness of the proposed enabling technologies and confirm the feasibility of agile resilience.