A Hybrid Approach for the Supply Chain Risk Assessment of the Construction Industry During the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 is an epidemic threat to human health caused by a novel coronavirus. Different countries are still struggling with whether to extend lockdown policies considering economic recession outcomes or lift the lockdown and recover the fragile economy. This research narrows the knowledge gap by applying a decision-making approach in a fuzzy environment to consider the uncertainties in the supply chain risk assessment of the construction industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, risk factors (RFs) are identified and interrelationships between RFs are depicted. RFs are categorized using expert panel surveys and literature reviews. The interdependencies between different RFs are evaluated using a combination of interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers, decision making trial and evaluation laboratory, and the Choquet integral to allow a strong interrelationship between the sum of rows and the sum of columns of RFs in structural correlation analysis. Next, priorities of RFs are obtained by considering interdependencies between different RFs using a combination of the technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) method with the intuitionistic fuzzy set. An intuitionistic fuzzy weighted average operator is utilized to aggregate individual opinions of decision makers for rating the importance of RFs. Results reported that the scarcity of material and financial resources due to movement restrictions with overall weights of 0.0614 and 0.413 are the most prominent RFs in the supply chain due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of this research can assist decision-makers in developing strategic policies to prevail over the risk challenges and subsequently aid experts in redesigning supply chains. IEEE