Understanding and predicting how container routing stands to be impacted by different scenarios of liner shipping network perturbations such as natural disasters or new major port developments is of key importance for decision-making in the liner shipping industry. The variety of actors and processes within modern supply chains, and the complexity of their associated relationships have previously led to the development of simulation-based models, whose application has been largely compromised by their dependency on extensive and complex sets of data. This study proposes the application of optimisation techniques, less dependent on complex data sets, in order to develop a quantitative framework to assess the impacts of disruptive events on the liner shipping network. It also provides a categorization of such network perturbations, differentiating between systemic and external and proposes the application of a container assignment model that minimizes the expected container routing costs in order to assess scenarios related to the consequences of seismic and conflict hazards affecting the Southeast Asia to Europe trades.