Evaluating recovery strategies for the disruptions in liner shipping networks: a resilience approach

Abstract

PurposeSince the start of the current century, the world at large has experienced uncertainties as a result of climate change, terrorism threats and increasing economic upheaval. These uncertainties create non-classical risks for global seaborne container trade and liner shipping networks (LSNs). The purpose of this paper is to establish a novel risk-based resilience framework to measure the effectiveness of different recovery strategies for the disruptions in LSNs in a quantitative manner.Design/methodology/approachBased on a resilience loss triangle model, an indicator of resilience–cost ratio is designed to measure the performance of LSNs during recovery. Four recovery strategies are proposed to test the rationality and feasibility of the developed indicator in aiding decision-making of LSNs from a resilience perspective.FindingsThe analysis results reveal that the superiorities of different recovery strategies vary depending on both the structures of LSNs and the specific requirements during recovery. Moreover, optimizing the sequence of ports being recovered will improve the overall recovery efficiency of the investigated LSN.Research limitations/implicationsAs an exploratory research trying to enrich the risk-based resilience evaluation of LSNs from a complex network perspective, only two attributes (e.g. port scare and economy) are considered at the current stage when estimating the time needed to fully recover the whole LSN. In future research, more attributes from the industry may be identified and incorporated into the proposed model to further extend its ability and application scopes.Practical implicationsThe findings will help to improve managerial understandings of recovery strategies to build more resilient LSNs. The proposed model has the capability to be tailored to tackle different types of risks in addition to the storm disaster condition.Originality/valueThe risk-based resilience framework and the resilience–cost ratio indicator are newly developed in this research. They can consider LSNs' structural resilience and the total costs that a recovery strategy needs to restore the whole system simultaneously.