CSH Talk by Célian Colon: “Coupling transport and supply chains to analyze the impact of disasters—an application to the United Republic of Tanzania”

The lecture by Célian Colon, IIASA will take place at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna.

Room: 201

If you are interested in participating, please email to office@csh.ac.at.

Abstract

The economy of the United Republic of Tanzania is growing fast but remains vulnerable to disasters. Its transport system, which mainly consist of roads, often get disrupted by floods, leading to large economic losses. How could its resilience be improved? We formulate a dynamic agent-based model which combines two approaches: network criticality analyses and economic input–output models. It simulates the impacts of transportation disruption on firms, and how these impacts propagate along supply chains and affect households. We found that losses nonlinearly increase with the duration of the initial disruption. Supply chains amplify disruptions for nonprimary products, such as processed food. Bottlenecks varies with supply chains. Some infrastructures are critical to some agents, say international buyers, but of little use to others. Resilience-enhancing strategies need to articulate supply-side—e.g., improving infrastructure quality—and demand-side measures—e.g., manage the need for transportation.

Bio

Celian is an Associate Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). His research focuses on the modeling of systemic risks, resilience and tipping points in ecological and economic systems, using system dynamics, agent-based modeling, and complex networks. He completed his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics with Prof. Michael Ghil at Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris (2016), for a thesis entitled Modeling Economic Resilience. He holds a M.Sc. in Environmental Technology and Policy from Imperial College London (2011), and graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique Paris (2010), a multisciplinary engineering school. Celian is also associated with the World Bank, with the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, and is chief data advisor for Lemon Tri, a startup company in the recycling business.