Benjamin Rachunok

Ben Rachunok is an assistant professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at NC State University. Broadly, Rachunok works in risk and decision analysis with applications in sustainability and climate change adaptation. More specifically, his research uses methods from simulation and data science to understand how communities respond to natural hazards and climate change. Much of his recent work quantifies the disproportionate impact of climate change and extreme events on low-income or historically disadvantaged communities.

Works (15)

Updated: January 15th, 2025 10:15

2024 journal article

Alternative household water affordability metrics using water bill delinquency behavior

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS, 19(7).

By: J. Skerker, A. Verma, M. Edwards, B. Rachunok*  & S. Fletcher

author keywords: water affordability; delinquency; urban water; water rates
UN Sustainable Development Goals Color Wheel
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
Sources: ORCID, Web Of Science, NC State University Libraries
Added: June 22, 2024

2023 journal article

Predicting and understanding residential water use with interpretable machine learning

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS, 19(1).

By: B. Rachunok n , A. Verma * & S. Fletcher*

author keywords: drought; water use; water; machine learning
TL;DR: This work uses post-hoc interpretability methods to examine how drivers of water use interact, focusing on environmental, demographic, physical housing, and utility policy factors, finding all four categories of factors are important for estimating water use with environmental and utility policy factors playing the largest role. (via Semantic Scholar)
UN Sustainable Development Goals Color Wheel
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
6. Clean Water and Sanitation (Web of Science; OpenAlex)
Sources: ORCID, Web Of Science, NC State University Libraries
Added: January 10, 2024

2023 journal article

Socio-hydrological drought impacts on urban water affordability

Nature Water.

By: B. Rachunok*  & S. Fletcher*

Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2023 journal article

Socio-hydrological impacts of rate design on water affordability during drought

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS, 18(12).

By: A. Nayak *, B. Rachunok* , B. Thompson* & S. Fletcher*

author keywords: drought; water affordability; rate design; socio-hydrology; systems modeling
UN Sustainable Development Goals Color Wheel
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
6. Clean Water and Sanitation (Web of Science; OpenAlex)
Sources: ORCID, Web Of Science, NC State University Libraries
Added: November 15, 2023

2021 journal article

Mapping climate discourse to climate opinion: An approach for augmenting surveys with social media to enhance understandings of climate opinion in the United States

PLOS ONE.

By: J. Bennett *, B. Rachunok* , R. Flage * & R. Nateghi *

Ed(s): N. Grabar

MeSH headings : Algorithms; Attitude; Climate; Geography; Models, Theoretical; Motivation; Social Media; Surveys and Questionnaires; United States
TL;DR: A machine learning framework—grounded in statistical learning theory and natural language processing—to augment climate change opinion surveys with social media data is outlined, allowing for discerning the regionally distinct topics and themes that contribute to climate opinions. (via Semantic Scholar)
UN Sustainable Development Goals Color Wheel
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
13. Climate Action (OpenAlex)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2021 journal article

Overemphasis on recovery inhibits community transformation and creates resilience traps

Nature Communications.

By: B. Rachunok*  & R. Nateghi *

TL;DR: It is shown that an overemphasis on recovery without accounting for transformation entrenches ‘resilience traps’–risk factors within a community that are predictive of recovery, but inhibit transformation. (via Semantic Scholar)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2021 journal article

Short-term solar irradiance forecasting using convolutional neural networks and cloud imagery

Environmental Research Letters, 16(4), 044045.

By: M. Choi *, B. Rachunok*  & R. Nateghi *

author keywords: solar irradiance forecasting; deep learning; convolutional neural network; satellite imagery; remote sensing; renewable energy
TL;DR: A convolutional global horizontal irradiance prediction model is developed, using Convolutional neural networks and publicly accessible satellite cloud images to ensure efficient harvesting of the solar energy and reliable operation of the grid. (via Semantic Scholar)
UN Sustainable Development Goals Color Wheel
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
7. Affordable and Clean Energy (OpenAlex)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2021 journal article

The overlooked environmental footprint of increasing Internet use

Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 167, 105389.

By: R. Obringer *, B. Rachunok* , D. Maia-Silva *, M. Arbabzadeh*, R. Nateghi * & K. Madani*

author keywords: Environmental footprint; Data center; Sustainability; Internet; Energy transition; Social responsibility
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2020 journal article

Assessing Global Environmental Sustainability Via an Unsupervised Clustering Framework

Sustainability, 12(2), 563.

By: A. Kanmani*, R. Obringer *, B. Rachunok*  & R. Nateghi *

author keywords: environmental sustainability; unsupervised learning; self-organized maps; global analysis; environmental performance index; clustering framework
TL;DR: The proposed framework harnesses a clustering technique known as Self-Organized Maps to group countries based on their characteristic environmental performance metrics and track progression in terms of shifts within clusters over time and supports the hypothesis that the inconsistencies in the EPI calculation can lead to misrepresentations of the relative sustainability of countries over time. (via Semantic Scholar)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2020 journal article

Assessment of wind power scenario creation methods for stochastic power systems operations

Applied Energy.

Benjamin Rachunok

author keywords: Wind power; Scenario creation; Probabilistic scenarios; Scenario evaluation; Stochastic unit commitment; Production cost modeling
TL;DR: It is shown that the choice of scenario set can significantly impact system operating cost, renewable energy use, and the ability of the system to meet demand, highlighting the need for the use of performance-based assessments for scenario evaluation. (via Semantic Scholar)
UN Sustainable Development Goals Color Wheel
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
7. Affordable and Clean Energy (OpenAlex)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2020 journal article

Asymmetrical response of California electricity demand to summer-time temperature variation

Scientific Reports.

By: R. Kumar *, B. Rachunok* , D. Maia-Silva * & R. Nateghi *

UN Sustainable Development Goals Color Wheel
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
13. Climate Action (OpenAlex)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2020 journal article

Hurricane-induced power outage risk under climate change is primarily driven by the uncertainty in projections of future hurricane frequency

Scientific Reports.

By: N. Alemazkoor *, B. Rachunok* , D. Chavas *, A. Staid *, A. Louhghalam*, R. Nateghi *, M. Tootkaboni *

UN Sustainable Development Goals Color Wheel
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
13. Climate Action (OpenAlex)
Source: ORCID
Added: April 22, 2024

2019 journal article

The sensitivity of electric power infrastructure resilience to the spatial distribution of disaster impacts

Reliability Engineering & System Safety.

Benjamin Rachunok

author keywords: Infrastructure; Resilience; Natural hazards
TL;DR: It is found that incorporating information about the spatial distribution of disaster impacts has significant implications for estimating infrastructure resilience, and the uncertainty associated with estimated infrastructure resilience metrics to spatially distributed disaster-induced disruptions is much higher than determined by previous methods. (via Semantic Scholar)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2019 journal article

Twitter and Disasters: A Social Resilience Fingerprint

IEEE Access, 7, 58495–58506.

By: B. Rachunok* , J. Bennett * & R. Nateghi *

author keywords: Data analysis; human computer interaction; resilience; Twitter
TL;DR: It is shown that major disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes have a unique resilience fingerprint which is consistent between different events of the same type and specifically, hurricanes have a distinct fingerprint which differentiates them from other major events. (via Semantic Scholar)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

2018 conference paper

Stochastic Unit Commitment Performance Considering Monte Carlo Wind Power Scenarios

2018 IEEE International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems (PMAPS).

Benjamin Rachunok

TL;DR: Examining tradeoffs between computational complexity and quality in stochastic unit commitment using real-world wind power data in the context of an out-of-sample production cost model simulation finds unexpected transitions in computational difficulty at a specific threshold in the number of scenarios. (via Semantic Scholar)
UN Sustainable Development Goals Color Wheel
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
7. Affordable and Clean Energy (OpenAlex)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 19, 2023

Employment

Updated: January 19th, 2023 15:27

2023 - present

North Carolina State University Raleigh, North Carolina, US
Assistant Professor Industrial & Systems Engineering

2021 - 2022

Stanford University Stanford, CA, US
Postdoc Civil & Environmental Engineering

Education

Updated: January 13th, 2021 10:32

2016 - 2020

Purdue University West Lafayette, IN, US
Ph.D. School of Industrial Engineering

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