Resilience-driven optimisation for cascading disruption adaptation across the European container shipping network

Ports frequently face recurrent disruptive events associated with strikes, extreme weather, and regional conflicts. Recent disruptive events such as Red Sea crisis and Russia-Ukraine conflict have generated significant impact onto European ports. These shocks trigger cascading disruptions as cargo flows are redistributed to alternative ports, undermining network resilience and exposing the vulnerabilities of diverse stakeholders. To tackle this challenge, this study develops a resilience-driven multi-objective optimisation framework that supports actionable load redistribution during cascading disruptions. The framework jointly minimises time-related costs for shippers and carriers, alleviates port congestion, and preserves the structural integrity of the network. To enable a practical-scale implementation, a novel stepwise heuristic algorithm is designed to produce redistribution decisions at each stage of the disruption. By simulating full disruption propagation, the framework quantifies multidimensional resilience losses using economic, functional, and structural indicators. Applied to the European container shipping network (ECSN), a comprehensive assessment of failure scenarios across all 172 ports reveals pronounced heterogeneity in systemic importance across Europe. Using the Port of Hamburg as a case study, the proposed framework outperforms four widely used heuristics in mitigating the cascading disruptions triggered by port failure, delivering consistent gains in reduced cumulative costs, lower port congestion, and improved preservation of network connectivity.

Keywords: Resilience-driven optimisation, cascading failures, shipping networks.