Governing Hydrogen Transitions in Cities: A DEMATEL–ISM–TRIZ Framework for Risk-Structured Innovation and Social Legitimacy

The rapid expansion of hydrogen supply chains introduces complex governance, financial, and operational risks that challenge sustainable transition pathways, particularly within urban and peri-urban industrial ecosystems. This study aims to identify the structural drivers of these risks and develop contradiction-based strategies to enhance systemic robustness. An integrated DEMATEL–ISM–TRIZ framework is employed to map causal interdependencies, construct hierarchical risk structures, and translate systemic tensions into innovation-oriented design principles. DEMATEL identifies cause-and-effect relationships, ISM establishes multilevel structural positioning, and TRIZ resolves critical contradictions through inventive principles. The results reveal that institutional coordination, regulatory adaptability, and strategic investment logic function as foundational drivers of cascading vulnerabilities. Hierarchical modeling confirms that many operational and social risks, including community acceptance and environmental conflicts, are dependent outcomes rather than root causes, with significant implications for urban governance and social legitimacy. Mapped to governance levels, the foundational drivers (R6, R9) operate mainly at the national and supply-chain-wide levels, the regulatory transmission risks (R10–R12) link national rule-setting with regional and municipal implementation, and the dependent social risks (R13–R15) materialize primarily at the urban/local level. TRIZ analysis indicates that robustness is achieved through adaptive governance, phased investment, modular infrastructure design, and socially embedded implementation sequencing. The TRIZ-derived inventive principles are subsequently contextualized as a strategic governance framework for city and regional policymakers, providing a roadmap for orchestrating a just and resilient hydrogen transition within urban and peri-urban industrial ecosystems. The integrated framework demonstrates that hydrogen supply chain sustainability emerges from structural redesign rather than incremental risk mitigation. This study contributes a coherent methodological architecture that links structural diagnosis with contradiction-driven governance innovation for sustainable energy transitions in cities.