Circular Economy in Crisis Contexts: An Assessment Framework for Post-Disaster Building Stock Toward Strategic Autonomy

Post-disaster contexts generate large volumes of damaged building stock with significant, yet often unquantified, circularity potential. Through the lens of strategic management, the circular economy emerges as a transformative pathway to strengthen systemic resilience by reducing dependencies on external resources and mitigating supply chain vulnerabilities in crisis environments. To address the gap between conceptual circularity and its practical application, this study introduces a novel strategic decision-support framework for systematically assessing the post-disaster circularity potential of damaged buildings. The framework is developed through a structured mixed-method approach combining a literature-based conceptual synthesis, analytical formalization, and case study demonstration. On this basis, circularity determinants are organized into five categories, including “Impact,” “Perception,” “State,” “Need,” and “Feasibility,” and operationalized through a two-stage assessment that distinguishes between theoretical and accessible circularity potential. The framework is applied to the war-affected town of Trostyanets, Ukraine, illustrating its capacity to translate heterogeneous post-disaster building data into actionable strategic insights for resource recovery and localized circular supply chains. Results highlight both the magnitude of recoverable resources and the socio-technical constraints that shape their practical accessibility. While focused on Ukraine, the proposed framework provides a replicable and scalable approach to integrating circular economy principles into resource governance and reconstruction strategies. This work presents an original contribution by proposing a robust methodology that bridges the gap between theoretical circularity potential and tangible implementation by firms, public authorities, and reconstruction consortia. The findings are broadly applicable to regions affected by armed conflicts or natural disasters, fostering enhanced strategic resource autonomy, increased resilience, and improved resource security in high-uncertainty environments.