Abstract

Pipeline transportation of heavy oil poses significant risk to the environment and the human population. Though remarkable progress has been made in developing both qualitative and quantitative techniques for assessing pipeline risk, the potential threat to the bodies of water has not been well studied in the literature. In this study, we focus on three bodies of water, that is, river, lake, and aquifers, and propose water diffusion model for each, which are then used to evaluate the risk of the Energy East pipeline project in Canada. Each diffusion model facilitates estimating impact radius that enables determining the environmental risk, which in turn could be used as a surrogate of affected population.

摘要

重油的管道运输对环境和人口构成重大风险。尽管在开发定性和定量技术以评估管道风险方面已经取得了显着进展，但是对水体的潜在威胁尚未在文献中进行很好的研究。在这项研究中，我们重点研究了三种水体，即河流，湖泊和含水层，并针对每种水体提出了水扩散模型，然后将其用于评估加拿大Energy East管道项目的风险。每个扩散模型都有助于估算影响半径，从而确定环境风险，进而可以用作受影响人口的替代物。