A decision support system for strengthening flood resilience in Greek ports

Ports are increasingly exposed to climate-related and other disruptive events, requiring swift, informed, and inclusive decision-making to ensure operational continuity and long-term resilience. This study presents an adaptable, user-friendly Decision Support System (DSS), designed to help Greek ports assess and enhance climate resilience. The DSS operates across two complementary decision-making layers: (i) a strategic layer, based on a multi-stakeholder, multi-criteria framework that calculates a Port Resilience Index (PRI) using a Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and covers infrastructure, operational, digital, socioeconomic, and governance resilience; and (ii) a tactical layer, implemented through the RESPOnse system, which integrates port data, hydrodynamic simulation modeling, an event recording module, and a preparedness actions module. The DSS is demonstrated through three Living Labs established in the key Greek ports of Heraklion, Volos, and Chios. As per the results, the PRI analysis revealed that environmental sustainability and regulatory adaptability were consistently ranked as top priorities across all stakeholder groups in the three ports, while infrastructure redundancy, multimodal accessibility, and digital resilience emerged as common vulnerabilities. Moreover, the evaluation of RESPOnse showed that stakeholders valued the system for enabling a shared understanding of port-specific vulnerabilities at the strategic level and for providing clear, actionable preparedness measures at the tactical level, thereby strengthening coordination and timely response against disruptive events.