The U.S. Gulf Coast is home to more than half of total U.S. refining capacity. But given the area’s vulnerability to hurricanes, weather-related stoppages and slowdowns weigh heavily on the nation’s supply of petroleum products.

Researchers at Rice University in Houston have proposed development of a predictive model for the likelihood and expected duration of refinery shutdowns under hurricane hazards. Their work is described in “Development and Application of a Predictive Model for Estimating Refinery Shutdown Duration and Resilience Impacts Due to Hurricane Hazards,” published in the September 2023 issue of the ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B: Mechanical Engineering.

To start off, how did the idea for this predictive model develop? Can you tell us about the initial stages of research and how this effort got moving?