RELiC-build: A reliability-embedded SCGE–scheduling framework to quantify climate impacts and decarbonization options in construction supply chains

We develop RELiC-Build, an integrated macro–micro framework that quantifies how climate-driven transport unreliability propagates through construction supply chains into delivered material prices, project schedule and cost risk, and economy-wide outcomes. The approach couples a spatial computable general equilibrium (SCGE) model with project-level stochastic scheduling and site-gate queueing, allowing origin–destination reliability (mean delay, variability, and disruption risk) to affect trade frictions, sourcing patterns, and on-site delivery performance. Applied to U.S. conditions using historical reliability and hazard data with a 2035 climate-stress scenario, the model indicates material-specific delivered price increases, largest for time- and temperature-sensitive inputs (e.g., ready-mix concrete and hot-mix asphalt), along with declines in on-time delivery, higher buffering needs, and meaningful increases in schedule slippage and cost overruns for representative road, bridge, and public-building projects. In equilibrium, these disruptions translate into a measurable contraction in construction gross value added and welfare losses. We then evaluate portfolios that combine targeted corridor hardening, digital micro-logistics and inventory coordination, and expanded on-site storage, showing that layered interventions can recover a majority of welfare losses while substantially reducing project delays under realistic budgets. Adding a complementary decarbonization measure, partial electrification with heat-adaptive shift design, reduces weather-related downtime and cuts cradle-to-site emissions with favorable economics at moderate carbon prices. Overall, the results provide a decision-ready basis to prioritize high-leverage corridors, coordination and buffering investments, and resilience–decarbonization co-measures using consistent metrics across prices, project risk, and welfare.