Karoliina Rimhanen, Pasi Rikkonen

Building resilient food systems: A resilience assessment framework for food supply

Introduction

Building resilient food systems: a resilience assessment framework for food supply. Strengthen food supply system resilience with a new assessment framework. Discover how to operationalize robustness, recovery, and reorientation capacities for enhanced food security, risk management, and strategic investment.

Abstract

Food supply systems operate in increasingly uncertain and dynamic environments, where disturbances can affect performance and long-term viability. Strengthening resilience is therefore a strategic priority for food security, yet practical system-level assessment tools remain limited. This paper presents a framework that operationalizes resilience as three interrelated capacities: robustness, recovery, and reorientation. It offers a stepwise process integrating quantitative and qualitative indicators, including stakeholder-based assessments. By combining evidence on system structures and dependencies with actor-related knowledge on preparedness, coordination, learning, and adaptation, the framework enables transparent interpretation of strengths, vulnerabilities, and trade-offs. An application to the dairy sector illustrates its use in characterizing structure, interpreting capacities, and identifying development needs. The framework is adaptable across sectors and regions, depending on data and stakeholder engagement. It contributes research by linking resilience theory with practical assessment logic and advancing mixed-method approaches for system-level analysis, providing a basis for scientific and policy reflection under uncertainty. The approach also supports comparison across cases and informs decision-making on risk management, investment, and governance priorities.

Review

This paper presents a highly relevant and timely contribution to the discourse on food security by tackling the critical need for practical tools to assess food supply system resilience. The authors clearly articulate the problem: food systems operate in dynamic, uncertain environments, yet effective system-level assessment tools for strengthening resilience remain limited. Their proposed solution is an innovative framework that operationalizes resilience into three distinct yet interrelated capacities – robustness, recovery, and reorientation – offering a structured, stepwise process that integrates both quantitative and qualitative indicators, importantly including stakeholder-based assessments. A key strength of the framework lies in its comprehensive methodological approach, which intelligently combines empirical data on system structures and dependencies with vital actor-related knowledge on preparedness, coordination, learning, and adaptation. This integrated perspective is crucial for providing a transparent interpretation of system strengths, vulnerabilities, and inherent trade-offs. The abstract highlights an illustrative application to the dairy sector, demonstrating the framework's utility in characterizing system structure, interpreting capacities, and identifying specific development needs. Its adaptability across various sectors and regions, dependent on data availability and stakeholder engagement, underscores its potential for broad applicability. The framework offers substantial contributions to both academic research and practical policy-making. Academically, it bridges theoretical resilience concepts with a pragmatic assessment logic, advancing the application of mixed-method approaches for complex system-level analysis. For policymakers and practitioners, it provides a robust and systematic basis for informed decision-making regarding risk management strategies, investment priorities, and governance structures, particularly under conditions of inherent uncertainty. The capacity for cross-case comparison further enhances its utility, offering valuable insights for benchmarking and learning. Overall, this paper introduces a promising tool set to significantly advance the understanding and strategic enhancement of food supply system resilience.

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