Abstract
The resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to disruptive events is significant as this highly prevalent category of business forms the economic backbone in developed countries. This article provides an overview of the application of a computational modelling and simulation approach to evaluate SMEs' operational resilience to flooding based on combinations of structural and procedural mitigation measures that may be implemented to improve their premises' resistance to flooding and safeguard their business continuity. The approach integrates flood modelling and simulation with agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) within a modelled geographical environment. SMEs are modelled as agents based on findings of semi-structured interviews with SMEs that have experienced flooding or are at risk of flooding. In this paper, the ABMS has been applied to a new case study of the major flood event of 2007 in Tewkesbury. Furthermore, to enable an evaluation of the operational resilience of manufacturing SMEs in terms of the relative effectiveness of flood mitigation measures, a new coefficient based on production loss is introduced. Results indicate structural mitigation measures are more effective than procedural measures. While this result is intuitive, the approach provides a means of evaluating the relative effectiveness of combinations of mitigation measures that SMEs may implement to enhance their operational resilience to flooding.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Urban flood resilience’.
Highlights
Business and organizational resilience to disruptions, disturbances and discontinuities is an evolving area of research [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
A growing body of research has emerged in relation to the resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) [10,11,12,13] with a number of researchers focusing on resilience and recovery to extreme weather events [14,15] and flooding [16,17,18,19]
The 2007 extreme flood event in Tewkesbury has been modelled and simulated, and a number of agent-based simulation experiments performed with each corresponding to manufacturing SMEs having implemented different combinations of structural and/or procedural flood mitigation measures
Summary
Business and organizational resilience to disruptions, disturbances and discontinuities is an evolving area of research [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. A growing body of research has emerged in relation to the resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) [10,11,12,13] with a number of researchers focusing on resilience and recovery to extreme weather events [14,15] and flooding [16,17,18,19] In spite of this emerging body of research, it has been asserted that the impact of natural disasters on small businesses has been understudied [20]. With a particular emphasis on flooding, it has been indicated that there is a dearth of research involving businesses, preparedness and recovery [21] and its impact upon small businesses is largely unexplored [22]
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