thomas tredgold was the introduced the concept of resilience in 1818 in england. the term was used to describe a property in the strength of timber, as beams were bent and deformed to support heavy load. tredgold found the timber durable and did not burn readily, despite being planted in bad soil conditions and exposed climates. resilience was then refined by mallett in 1856 in relation to the capacity of specific materials to withstand specific disturbances. these definitions can be used in engineering resilience due to the application of a single material that has a stable equilibrium regime rather than the complex adaptive stability of larger systems.