A Study on Resilience Evaluation of Tunnel Construction Based on Mixed Methods

Abstract Tunnel construction resilience evaluation helps tunnel construction resilience enhancement. This study proposes the concept of tunnel construction resilience by combining the resilience and the characteristics of tunnel construction and focuses on evaluating and enhancing resilience in tunnel construction through a mixed-methods framework. A three-level indicator system is proposed, which contains five secondary evaluation indicators of people, materials, technology, environment and management and 23 tertiary evaluation indicators. The methodology integrates group decision-making Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for weighting indicators and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation to assess resilience in practice. A case study on the Xiangyalu Cross-river Tunnel Project demonstrates the model’s applicability, revealing that technological factors hold the highest weight (0.326) among secondary indicators, while environmental conditions like hydrological/geological risks scored below 0.5 in evaluations. Key findings emphasize that emergency preparedness and environmental adaptability require urgent attention. The model’s validation shows strong alignment with real-world challenges, reducing post-disruption recovery time by 30% on average. Ultimately, the framework provides actionable insights for optimizing resilience strategies, enabling targeted improvements in high-risk areas. By bridging theoretical metrics with empirical data, the study advances practical tools for mitigating uncertainties in complex tunnel engineering, ensuring safer and more sustainable construction practices. The results show that the tunnel construction resilience evaluation model proposed by the study can well reflect the reality of tunnel construction, and the tunnel construction resilience evaluation model proposed by the study can help to improve the tunnel construction resilience in a more targeted way in the process of engineering practice.