Designing a Systemic Risk and Robustness Assessment for Critical Value Chains

Supply chains, especially those related to critical goods such as food, hygiene products, and medication, are increasingly vulnerable to disruptions stemming from a wide range of risks and systemic interdependencies. In order to address this challenge, we describe a conceptual approach for a systemic assessment framework that integrates both risk and robustness aspects by design and is tailored to the specific requirements and challenges of critical value chains. This monitoring framework builds on a process model for analyzing vulnerabilities and disturbances within such a critical value chain. The significant stakeholders along with their interconnections and vulnerabilities are identified in a structured manner based on domain information and expert knowledge. Furthermore, the monitoring framework utilizes a cross-sectoral simulation model that builds upon an abstract representation of the supply chain and facilitates the analysis of cascading effects across organizational and sectoral borders. This model enables the assessment and visualization of the complex relations and dependencies within a supply chain in a general manner, particularly capturing orthogonal factors such as transport, maintenance, or legal aspects.

Keywords: Risk and robustness assessment, Cross-sector simulation, Cascading effects, Vulnerability analysis, Critical value chains.