Keynote Lecture – Industrial Infrastructure Resilience in Coastal Multi-Hazard Settings
J. Padgett, Stanley C. Moore Endowed Chair & Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, USA
Many coastal communities are co-located and intrinsically interwoven with industrial development, including ports, chemical plants, or oil and gas operations. While these industries are often strategically placed along the coast, their positioning alongside neighboring communities leaves them jointly susceptible to severe storm-induced multi-hazards (e.g., wind, flood, storm surge, extreme rainfall) and their compound effects. Such hazards pose a threat to infrastructure performance leading to damage that can have significant cascading social, environmental and economic consequences. This presentation poses multi-hazard risk and resilience assessment frameworks for coastal industrial infrastructure and probes the potential for damage, impact of mitigation, and cascading consequences within neighboring communities. Primary examples are drawn from above ground storage tanks (ASTs) in petrochemical facilities, which offer bulk storage of hazardous materials, including a variety of fuels and chemicals. This presentation explores the vulnerability of this key piece of industrial infrastructure, while highlighting the socio-political context in which associated risks have evolved and identifying the prospects for mitigation. Broader implications of climate change and severe storm impacts on industrial complexes, like refineries, are also explored via economic loss modeling. Scenario-based and probabilistic risk assessments are presented using case studies in the Houston Ship Channel region–the second largest petrochemical complex in the world. This work provides insights on the viability of mitigation strategies, offers improved understanding of the factors and conditions that affect risks to industrial infrastructure, and identifies future research needs to support resilience enhancement in coastal multi-hazard regions.