Cross-regional and multi-entity resource coordination can enhance the supply of disaster relief materials during flood events in China

Abstract Municipalities face growing challenges in independently managing frequent and severe external shocks, often constrained by limited relief supplies and inefficient allocation strategies. Here we develop and implement hybrid coordination strategies that integrate cross-regional and multi-entity resource allocation to enhance national flood resilience across China’s eight major river basins. By incorporating cross-regional coordination among government reserves, we demonstrate that the 12-h demand coverage rate (DCR) for 1-in-100-year basin flood events can increase from 15% to 51%. Expanding to multi-entity coordination, which integrates enterprise reserves, further improves the 12-h DCR to 76%. Optimizing enterprise contractual reserve proportions can achieve complete demand coverage, even in the Yangtze and Pearl River basins with dense populations and large relief shortages. Our work provides insights into operational disaster relief coordination and informs flood management strategies for other countries facing extreme flooding challenges.