Strengthening Post-Hurricane Supply Chain Resilience

The National Academy of Sciences has published a new report using observations from areas impacted by the 2017 Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria to identify key lessons and provide recommendations regarding the improvement of supply distribution networks in post-hurricane environments. Investment in resources to harden operations against natural disasters was found to be critical, and those state and local governments and larger businesses that were able to do so ended up being less impacted.  Most post-hurricane bottlenecks appeared at the distribution, rather than the production, level of the supply chain, as the organizations that make up that level are more affected by damaged critical infrastructure and more vulnerable in general. Emergency managers in charge of responding to the hurricanes faced limited-information environments, especially in terms of understanding post-storm supply chain bottlenecks and relevant government policies. The report’s authors provide multiple recommendations based off these lessons. On the private sector side, they encourage educating emergency managers to build an understanding of supply chain concepts so better decisions can be made with limited information and enhancing information sharing networks for supply chain stakeholders. On the public sector side, they encourage building supply chain network training materials for emergency managers and focusing government efforts on protecting the distribution level of the supply chain over the production level.