Building disaster resilient businesses and communities: learning and innovation across organizations
Around the world, climate and disaster risks, including extreme temperatures, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes, are impacting people, and disrupting production, transport, and market access — posing growing challenges to people, businesses, trade support institutions, and governments. This project has worked with businesses in Canada and Latin America to better understand these risks and to co-develop practical solutions that will help businesses better understand, plan for and invest in addressing shared climate risks to build resilient trade partnerships, local economies and communities.
The Building Disaster Resilience Across Global Business Supply Chains project, led by the Waterloo Climate Institute in partnership with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction for the Americas and the Caribbean (UNDRR), Trade Facilitation Office Canada (TFO Canada), and the Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies (ARISE Canada), has developed and tested tools that help Canadian and international businesses invest in climate adaptation.
The focus is on strengthening supply systems — not only at the company level, but also at critical points throughout the broader supply chain.
In order to address multi-hazard and cascading risks, the team expanded the analysis of a supply chain to conceptualize a supply system, one which accounts for different components, actors and processes that allow organizations to better classify climate risks beyond the technical impacts on operations, and move towards mapping, learning and innovation between business partners and the communities where they source, employ, mobilize or distribute their goods.
Project Outputs and Results
The project team is developing a suite of tools and resources intended to rapidly upskill and train managers, directors and investors to better identify shared climate risks and investment opportunities to enhance supply system resilience through tactical actions and long-term adaptation planning.
Case Studies
Real-world examples from agriculture, whole-food distribution, medical equipment, textiles, manufacturing, and coffee highlight the challenges in adaptation across these different supply systems and identify some of the components needed to develop adaptation and risk reduction strategies across complex international multi-actor supply chains.
Multi-Actor Climate Strategy Playbook
A practical guide informed by scenario-planning exercises tested with participating companies. The playbook outlines the foundations of resilient supply-chain design, including collaborative strategies, core strategic components, and key design parameters.
Investment Protocol
A tiered framework for turning strategy into action through investment planning, pilot interventions, and partnerships. The protocol supports phased investments in skills, tools, infrastructure, and place-based actions aligned with organizational capacity and business needs.
Rapid AI-supported Supply System Climate Risk Profiler
This AI-supported application is designed for companies, international organizations, and trade support institutions to rapidly assess and strengthen supply system resilience. (In progress.)
Research team
- Dr. Jose DiBella, Principal Investigator
- Dr. Sarah Burch, Co-Principal Investigator
- Yuki Yeung, PhD Research Assistant
Project partners
- UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction for the Americas and the Caribbean UNDRR, Panama
- Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilience Society ARISE Networks, Canada, Mexico, Colombia and Honduras
- Trade Facilitation Office TFO Canada
Project members
- Simon Glauser, Managing Director, Waterloo Climate Institute
- Natalie Smith, Communications Officer, Waterloo Climate Institute
- Darren Wynes, Project Coordinator, Waterloo Climate Institute
As we continue to observe the impacts of climate change on communities in Canada and across the globe, it has become clear that the way we think about trade, business strategy, investment, and partnerships must evolve to truly create resilient economies and societies. This project seeks to better understand supply systems, map shared risks between companies and communities, and generate evidence to design multi-actor climate adaptation strategies for long-term resilience.
The Building Disaster Resilience across Canadian Business Supply Chains project is led by the University of Waterloo Climate Institute, with funding support from Natural Resources Canada’s Climate Change Adaptation Program.
