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Resilience of small- and medium-sized enterprises as a correlation to community impact: an agent-based modeling approach

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Abstract

Access to government funding is one of the most effective ways to enhance the resilience for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) community after a disaster. Along these lines, a major focus of SME resiliency research has been on examining factors needed to keep an SME open after a disaster. This makes sense as SMEs are critical to community recovery. It seems logical that the severity of a disaster would indicate the impact to a community. Using a systems thinking methodology, we developed a hypothesis that this correlation of severity to impact breaks down over time, causing the community to quickly spiral into trouble. This paper presents an agent-based model to test our hypothesis. The results indicate the impact to a community becomes much more extreme after a threshold or “tipping point” is crossed.

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Notes

  1. Community is defined a population of less than 10,000 people.

  2. The terms ‘business’ and ‘enterprise’ are used interchangeably and a SME is defined as having less than 500 employees.

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Funding

Funding was provided by Jim McNatt Institute for Logistics Research (Grant No. JMI-101).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jim McNatt Institute for Logistics Research, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

    Brian Sauser, Wesley Randall & David Nowicki

  2. School of Business, Stockton University, Galloway, NJ, USA

    Clifton Baldwin

  3. Cameron School of Business, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA

    Saba Pourreza

Authors
  1. Brian Sauser
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  2. Clifton Baldwin
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  3. Saba Pourreza
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  4. Wesley Randall
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  5. David Nowicki
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Correspondence to Brian Sauser.

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Sauser, B., Baldwin, C., Pourreza, S. et al. Resilience of small- and medium-sized enterprises as a correlation to community impact: an agent-based modeling approach. Nat Hazards 90, 79–99 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-017-3034-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-017-3034-9

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