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 paper 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.
@article{arxiv.2509.24038,
title = {Beyond Redundancy: Toward Agile Resilience in Optical Networks to Overcome Unpredictable Disasters},
author = {Toru Mano and Hideki Nishizawa and Takeo Sasai and Soichiroh Usui and Dmitrii Briantcev and Devika Dass and Brandt Bashaw and Eoin Kenny and Marco Ruffini and Yoshiaki Sone and Koichi Takasugi and Daniel Kilper},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.24038},
year = {2026}
}