The Resilience of the Construction Supply Chain to Urban Flooding

Flooding is one of the most destructive natural hazards and major flooding events are happening more frequently in many parts of the world due to climate change and urbanisation. Generally, the occurrence of urban flooding is known to impact supply chains, with the supply chain in the construction sector being more vulnerable due to its particular characteristics. As such is important that the supply chain in construction is resilient to the complexity, suddenness and destructiveness of flooding. Drawing on a synthesis of the literature and the views of experts, this study identifies and then evaluates the key factors affecting the resilience of the construction supply chain based on the five dimensions of prediction, resistance, adaptation, recovery and optimization. Taking three cities affected by flooding in 2021 as examples, based on a combination of analytical techniques, the resilience of the urban construction supply chain in each city was calculated. The results of the study show that the three cities are ranked from the high to low in order of Hangzhou, Hefei and Zhengzhou. The findings provide robust insights into the factors that influence the resilience of the urban construction supply chain. The study provides improved clarity regarding the future improvement of urban construction supply chain resilience, which if implemented could lead to improvements in risk awareness and resilience, thereby reducing losses.