The impact of flexible environmental policy on maritime supply chain resilience

As policy makers acknowledge the high degree of supply chain vulnerability and the impact of maritime emissions on coastal population health, there has been a consistent effort to strengthen maritime security and environmental regulations. In recent years, overdependence on deeper and wider multinational supply and production chains and lean-optimization has led to tightly integrated systems with little slack and high sensitivity to disruptions. This study considers the impact of Emission Control Areas and establishes a link between environmental and network resilience performance for maritime supply chains using operational cost and SOx emissions cost metrics. The proposed methodological framework analyzes various abatement options, disruption intensities, fuel pricing instances and regulatory strategies. The methodology utilizes a minimum cost flow assignment and an arc velocity optimization model for vessel speed to establish the payoff for various network states. Additionally, an attacker defender game is set up to identify optimal regulatory strategies under various disruption scenarios. The results are complemented by a sensitivity analysis on SOx emissions pricing, to better equip policy makers to manage environmental and resilience legislation. The methodology and findings provide a comprehensive analytic approach to optimize maritime supply chain performance beyond minimisation of operational costs, to also minimize exposure to costly supply chain disruptions.