A circular disaster management framework for resilient cities

This study explores the integration of circular economy (CE) and life cycle strategies into disaster management to enhance urban resilience and address environmental sustainability. Climate-related disasters generate vast debris volumes that overwhelm waste systems, disrupt essential services, and incur significant social, economic, and environmental challenges. The prevailing linear practices prioritize rapid disposal over resource recovery, resulting in extensive landfilling and significant environmental footprints. In contrast, a CE approach offers sustainable alternatives through material recovery strategies such as reuse and recycling. However, CE integration in disaster management remains underdeveloped. Through a systematic literature review of studies from 1995 to 2025, this research studies disaster management practices and identifies barriers, opportunities, and enablers across technical, institutional, economic, and social domains for effective CE integration. The findings are synthesized to characterize a scientifically grounded, adaptive framework for circular disaster management. The framework unfolds in three stages: (1) developing an integrative decision-support system, (2) creating a comprehensive education and training platform, and (3) catalyzing institutional and business transformation and strengthening public-private partnerships. This framework systematically addresses technical, institutional, economic, and social barriers while leveraging identified opportunities to facilitate widespread adoption of CE principles across disaster management phases. This framework establishes a foundation for future research, policy development, and implementation of circular strategies in disaster contexts. Through this novel framework, the research contributes to advancing sustainable disaster management and urban resilience, providing stakeholders with actionable guidance to drive systemic changes across multiple domains.