Resilience assessment for China’s crude oil shipping network considering maritime chokepoint disruptions

Maritime chokepoints face increasing external disruptions from geopolitical conflicts, climate change, and sea accidents, which impose significant risks on global shipping networks and economic prosperity. This study proposes an optimization-based analytical framework to examine the dynamic behavior of network resilience across both disruption and recovery phases. Distinguished from traditional studies that rely on centrality-based indexes to determine critical nodes, the proposed framework identifies worst-case scenario by evaluating specific node failure sequences that induces the maximum resilience performance drop. A dual-optimization framework is then developed to determine the optimal recovery sequence. This framework maximizes the marginal improvement in system performance while explicitly accounting for the node-level recovery priorities. The proposed framework is empirically applied to China’s crude oil shipping network, constructed using voyage records derived from AIS that relevant to crude oil tankers serving China’s import trade. The analysis identifies a non-linear relationship between resilience loss during the recovery stage and the level of alternative capacity of disrupted maritime chokepoints. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that when critical chokepoints are disrupted, re-routing is not necessarily preferable to targeted recovery efforts. Based on these insights, this study provides a strategic decision-support tool for shipping companies to optimize routing designs and it offers a framework for national governments to safeguard energy security by identifying which chokepoints require prioritized diplomatic cooperation and infrastructure investments.