Balancing resilience and circularity in an artificial intelligence-augmented humanitarian aid supply chain: A practice-based view of Yin–Yang dialectical systems

Escalating climate change and geopolitical conflicts are widening humanitarian crises, creating an urgent need for AI-enabled humanitarian aid supply chains (HASCs) that are both resilient and circular. However, in practice, resilience and circularity often compete for crucial resources. To address this issue, this paper conceptualizes an AI-assisted HASC as a stratified system spanning governments, humanitarian organizations, and affected populations. It adopts a practice-based, dialectical systems view grounded in Yin–Yang philosophy to explore the dynamic balance of resilience and circularity in AI-assisted HASCs in different emergencies. More specifically, we create a Yin–Yang dialectical strategic map that characterises eight resource positions with various contradictions between the resource slack and the constraints in an AI-assisted HASC. Based on this, we propose eight possible strategies to resolve the above-mentioned resource tensions. To achieve a better understanding, we also construct a simulation model to examine the applicability of our novel paradigm. The key contribution lies in using an unconventional, practice-oriented Yin-Yang dialectical systems view to holistically explain how to balance resource slack and constraints while co-building resilience and circularity in AI-assisted HASCs. Practically, it highlights leveraging evolving AI as digital innovation to tackle traditional HASC challenges involving resource availability, environmental pressures, and societal concerns.