operations, further increasing the complexity of the event and its impact on maritime supply chains. Furthermore, disruptions that are new, novel, or reli- ant upon skills, capabilities, and resources from outside the MTS community can also comprise complex supply chain issues. This is especially true if outside experts do not prioritize the maritime supply chain. The novel coronavirus is an example where seafar- ers and port workers had no special skills or training to respond to the virus and public health experts had no understanding of maritime work environments. Therefore, the priorities were not aligned. A similar situation could arise from widespread power outages impacting ports and other maritime supply chain players. The power generation and trans- mission organizations will be responding from dif- ferent locations than the Coast Guard and potentially with different priorities. Meanwhile, freight forwarders and other logistics providers will struggle to track and reroute cargo while on emergency power. A power out- age, combined with some other disruption, could cer- tainly lead to significant cascading consequences. How Do Maritime Supply Chains Work? Despite these scenarios, maritime supply chains do work. Countless individual workers and businesses innovate, improvise, and overcome obstacles, working indepen- dently and on a business-to-business level. Government agencies find ways to use their authority and capabili- ties to allow a company to efficiently resume business. The hard work of all of these individuals has meant that, while the consequences of recent disruptions have been significant, they have been economic and transitory, not societal and persistent. To help understand the impact of disruptions, the table on this page provides a highly simplified diagram of critical supply chain elements. If any of these elements is negatively impacted, the system is resilient enough to recover with minimal costs and impacts—if the disrup- tion is small. When the severity, duration, geographic scale, or other factors are sufficiently large, cascading impacts occur. In our model, people are the founda- Critical Supply Chain Elements tion of all maritime supply chain activ- ity. Despite automation, computers, and other technology, we rely on skilled work- ers at every step. This is what has made COVID-19 so disruptive. COVID-19 did no physical or cyber damage, but its impact on people slowed every link in the supply chain. The various non-human components are subject to damage and destruction, and MTS members, like other businesses, need to minimize costs, including replacement costs, which does not necessarily promote resilience. For exam- ple, gantry cranes at container terminals are vital for cargo operations, but no facility can afford to have an extra $35 million gantry crane sitting idle on standby just in case a working crane becomes damaged. At the retail and manufacturing levels, the widely adopted “just in time” inventory system meant that businesses had little ability to absorb supply chain dis- ruptions. While there is a great deal of discussion in the business community about revising this approach, the economic incentives for a lean inventory will likely prevail. While economic incentives do not necessarily pro- mote resilience, in some cases they may even aggravate disruptions. Such is the case when ocean carriers find it more profitable to leave empty containers in port, rather than wait for them to be filled and loaded back on ships. In other cases, the economic consequences of a disrup- tion may be primarily borne by manufacturers and retailers, rather than by the maritime and port entities. Finally, government agencies, classification societies, insurance companies, and similar organizations pro- vide independent, expert risk oversight and governance functions. Their capacity is limited, and disruptions may push risk tolerances to uncomfortable levels. The MTS is continuously evolving, however, and it is important to plan for its future. Will investment in systems allowing vessels to use new types of fuels lead to new infrastructure requirements and vulnerabilities? Will increasing automation lead to problems in the case of power outages? Will autonomous and semi-autono- mous vessels on the water and trucks in the ports lead to new kinds of complex disruptions? We need to develop ways to address these kinds of questions. Development of Complex Disruption Scenarios The first phase of our research was to interview a vari- ety of transportation experts on their experiences with disruptions. While all of the researchers have had some experience in this field, listening to these experts explain Summer 2023 Proceedings 91