AbstractHistorically, epidemics and plagues are repeatedly reported to have happened since the ancient civilizations (Egypt, Greece, Rome and imperial China). Most known examples of a devastating global pandemics in recent history are the ‘Black Death’ (14th century) and the global influenza (1918-1919), also known as ‘Spanish Flu’, that has killed nearly 50 million people in the world. Even thoughpandemics may vary in their dimensions, length (short vs. long), scope (local/regional, national, global) and severity of effects (minimal effects or maximal effects), they all represent distinct exogenous and endogenous shocks that have far reaching effects on population, health, economy and other societal domains.Currently, the Covid-19 pandemic has relentlessly spreaded around the world, leaving behind destructive marks on health, populations, economies and societies. The Covid-19 could spread quickly around the globe because of the current structure of the global economy, which is highly interconnected through sophisticated global transport networks. An important characteristic of a suchnetworked complex system is it vulnerability to unattended events of systemic risk such as the Covid-19 pandemic for example. These systemic risks cause substantial cascading effects, which lead to extreme outcomes that could permanently alter economic, environmental, and social systems.In this article, we first, present, discuss and analyze the potential impacts of the Covid-19 on global economy, trade and supply chains, by focusing on Europe and/or the Netherlands. Second, we examine the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on the shipping industry and on the hub ports and the policy measures that have been applied by different countries around the world.
Food security depends on a network of actors and elements working together to produce and deliver healthy, sustainable, varied, safe and plentiful food supply to society. The interactions between these actors and elements must be designed, managed and optimized to satisfy demand. In this chapter we introduce Food Supply Chain Optimization and Demand, providing a framework to understand and improve food security from an operational and strategic point of view.
This chapter discusses supply chain management responses used by companies in the food supply chain during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter first discusses the relevant literature on supply chain resilience. The chapter subsequently reviews supply chain responses in relation to different supply chain resilience capabilities, and then discusses the theory and practice of supply chain capabilities in food supply chains.
MULTIFILE
The COVID19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability in supply chain networks in the healthcare sector and the tremendous waste problem of disposable healthcare products, such as isolation gowns. Single-use disposable isolation gowns cause great ecological impact. Reusable gowns can potentially reduce climate impacts and improve the resilience of healthcare systems by ensuring a steady supply in times of high demand. However, scaling reusable, circular isolation gowns in healthcare organizations is not straightforward. It is impeded by economic barriers – such as servicing costs for each use – and logistic and hygiene barriers, as processes for transport, storage and safety need to be (re)designed. Healthcare professionals (e.g. purchasing managers) lack complete information about social, economic and ecological costs, the true cost of products, to make informed circular purchasing decisions. Additionally, the residual value of materials recovered from circular products is overlooked and should be factored into purchasing decisions. To facilitate the transition to circular procurement in healthcare, purchasing managers need more fine-grained, dynamic information on true costs. Our RAAK Publiek proposal (MODLI) addresses a problem that purchasing managers face – making purchasing decisions that factor in social, economic and ecological costs and future benefits from recovered materials. Building on an existing consortium that developed a reusable and recyclable isolation gown, we design and develop an open-source decision-support tool to inform circular procurement in healthcare organizations and simulate various purchasing options of non-circular and circular products, including products from circular cascades. Circular procurement is considered a key driver in the transition to a circular economy as it contributes to closing energy and material loops and minimizes negative impacts and waste throughout entire product lifecycles. MODLI aims to support circular procurement policies in healthcare organizations by providing dynamic information for circular procurement decision making.
Climate change has impacted our planet ecosystem(s) in many ways. Among other alterations, the predominance of long(er) drought periods became a point of concern for many countries. A good example is The Netherlands, a country known by its channels and abundant surface water, which has listed “drought effect mitigation” among the different topics in the last version of its “Innovation Agenda” (Kennis en Innovatie Agenda, KIA). There are many challenges to tackle in such scenario, one of them is solutions for small/decentralized communities that suffer from dry-up of surface reservoirs and have no groundwater source available. Such sites are normally far from big cities and coastal zones, which impair the supply via distribution networks. In such cases, Atmospheric Water Generation (AWG) technologies are a plausible solution. These systems have relatively small production rates (few m3 per day), but they can still provide enough volume for cities with up to 100k inhabitants. Despite having real scale systems already installed in different locations worldwide, most systems are between TRL 5 and 6. Thus need further development. SunCET proposes an in-situ evaluation of an AWG system (WaterWin) developed by two different Dutch companies (Solaq and Sustainable Eyes) in the Brazilian semi-arid state of Ceará. The cooperation with NHL Stenden will provide the necessary expertise, analytical and technical support to conduct the tests. The state government of Ceará built an infrastructure to support the realization of in-situ tests, as they want to further accelerate technology implementation in the state. Such structure will make it possible to share costs and decrease total investments for the SMEs. Finally, it is also intended to help establishing partnerships between Dutch SMEs and Brazilian end users, i.e. municipalities of the Ceará state and small agriculture companies in the region.
