Development of an expert system for tackling the public’s perception to climate-change impacts on petroleum industry Y.F. Huang a,b , G.H. Huang a,c, * , Z.Y. Hu a , I. Maqsood a , A. Chakma d a Environmental Systems Engineering Program, University of Regina, Regina Saskatchewan, Canada S4S 0A2 b Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tshinghua University, Beijing 100084, China c Institute of Energy and Environmental Systems Engineering, North China Dianli University, Beijing 102206, China d Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 Abstract Climate change could cause significant impacts on human activities, which is especially true for regions that are of high latitude such as Canada. Petroleum industry is a main economic sector in Canada’s prairie, where a number of its production and processing practices are vulnerable to the fluctuations of climatic conditions. In this study, an expert system (ES) for integrated climate-change impact assessment within the prairie’s petroleum sector was developed. Interactive relationships among climate change, natural-condition variations, industrial activities, environmental concerns and economic objectives, as well as the related policy implications, were comprehensively examined and incorporated within the ES. A series of questionnaire surveys were conducted for acquiring knowledge about the interrelationships between the climate change and the petroleum-related activities. Processes that were vulnerable to climate change were analyzed, followed by an integrated impact assessment. The results indicated that the impacts of increased temperature and natural hazards would be very significant on most of the petroleum-related processes. Also, the petroleum industry would be quite sensitive to changed precipitation patterns. The developed ES can be used for both acquiring knowledge of climate-change impacts on the petroleum industry and supporting formulation of the relevant adaptation policies. q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Adaptation; Climate change; Expert system; Knowledge acquisition; Petroleum industry 1. Introduction Canada is the eleventh largest producer of cruder oil in the world. Most of the related activities concentrate within the Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Mani- toba). Climate change will lead to a number of direct and indirect impacts on petroleum industries in these provinces. For example, receding permafrost due to the warming climate may lead to increased slope instability and soil erosion, and thus affect safety of pipelines; sea level rise could damage energy production facilities located near or in the ocean; prolonged summer and shortened winter could have significant impacts on many petroleum-related activities, since some activities can be easily done in summer while the others are more suitable for winter. Some positive impacts may also exist, such as decreased cold weather stress on infrastructure production and processing, and reduced costs for offshore exploration due to longer working seasons and less need to withstand ice loads (Huang et al., 1998). Therefore, climate-change impact analysis and adaptation planning in the prairie’s petroleum sector will be crucial in the effort to improve the industry’s economic and environmental efficiencies. A challenging question faced by the industry is how they should adapt to the changing climatic conditions in order to maintain or improve their efficiencies. The answer to this question could be identified through development of a decision support system (or expert system) through tackling complexities associated with this industrial sector. Many factors need to be considered systematically, such as industrial processes and their vulnerability to climate change, interactions among different system components, potential adaptation measures, and inputs from stakeholders (Yin and Cohen, 1994; Huang et al., 1996; Yin, 2003; Karimipour et al., 2005). Expert Systems with Applications 29 (2005) 817–829 www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa 0957-4174/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2005.06.020 * Corresponding author. Tel.: C1 306 585 4095; fax: C1 306 585 4855. E-mail address: gordon.huang@uregina.ca (G.H. Huang).