Dependency of global supply chains on critical infrastructure resilience

Understanding the gaps and opportunities in the food logistics sector to meeting current and future infrastructure resilience challenges

Aims

The global supply of food is a highly interconnected system, dependent on multiple sectors. Major disruptions to food supply can have direct impacts on vulnerable communities, and indirect impacts such as civil unrest.

We want to influence stakeholders in the food supply chain to encourage understanding of critical infrastructure resilience including transportation whether road, rail, or ports, water and power, and communications systems. We will support better decision making that contributes to resilient infrastructure.

To contribute to this work:

An online survey is available to enable all those with experience and opinions to share them to contribute to our research. Please share this link with interested colleagues world-wide.

https://ovearup.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/supply-chain-resilience-in-the-grocery-sector

Project leaders

Xavier Aldea Borruel
Project Leader

Xavier is a chartered mechanical engineer and is Programme Officer for the Resilience Shift. Xavier has 10 years experience as an engineer, researcher and project manager, and has expertise in resilience of critical infrastructure, flood risk management, climate change and sustainability, with a strong professional background in the water sector.

How are we doing this?

We are using workshops and preparatory research to explore the current level of awareness in the food logistics industry of their dependency on infrastructure resilience.

We want to understand gaps and opportunities in terms of helping it meet current and future challenges related to the resilience of the critical infrastructure (ports, shipping, road, rail, energy, storage) on which it relies.

We have undertaken scoping and research activities to identify the best area of focus, leveraging Arup’s expertise in the logistics sector.

What are the outputs?

The expected impact of this project is to influence stakeholders in the food supply chain, and shift their understanding of the importance of resilience, so that decisions made along the supply chain are influenced by the need for resilience and not only short-term factors.

Workshops have taken place globally:

    • Manchester, UK – 6 February 2019. More.
    • New York, USA – 27 February 2019. More.
    • Johannesburg, South Africa - 13 March 2019. More.
    • Brisbane, Australia - 20 March 2019. More.
    • San Francisco, USA - 21 March 2019. More.
    • Madrid, Spain - 26 March 2019. More.
    • Hong Kong, Greater China - 11 April 2019. More

Our report will contribute to knowledge about resilience of food supply chains, especially the relative importance of critical infrastructure, and indicate a future direction.

 

Project Resources

Global supply chain workshop brochure

A series of global workshops has taken place. See our workshop brochure. Workshops focused on the resilience of food supply chains with the objective to provide participants with the opportunity to explore real challenges in this sector and to bring together key stakeholders, encouraging inter-sector collaboration and communication. By collaborating on resilience-focused activity at a global level, it is our intention that we can shape possible pathways forward to allow us to improve the resilience of our infrastructure for all.

Round-table Ports and Logistics

Our recent round-table explored the resilience of critical infrastructure for ports and logistics. Find out more about the conclusions of the workshop.

 

 

 

Collaborators

The Resilience Shift has partnered with Arup's logistics experts under the leadership of Darren Briggs. Darren is a logistics consultant and Associate Director in Advisory Services at Arup. Darren’s main area of expertise is advising on operational requirements and improvements in the built environment, covering construction and new or existing site logistics operations. He has worked on a variety of projects, both in the United Kingdom and internationally, covering most aspects of operations.

Resilience Shift round-table on ports and logistics: Report now available

The round-table provided an opportunity for participants to consider the role of resilience thinking for sea ports and associated logistics operations. The event was designed to stimulate conversation among port operators and stakeholders associated with their supply chains. You can now read the findings of this round-table here.

 

Find out more.

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