A paradigm shift in Natech risk management: Development of a rating system framework for evaluating the performance of industry

doi:10.1016/j.jlp.2021.104615

Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries

Volume 74, January 2022, 104615

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlp.2021.104615 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Comprehensive Natech area-wide risk management and rating system framework.
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Interconnection of key factors and stakeholders at industrial facilities' location.
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Industry and government abilities enhancement to manage Natech risk comprehensively.
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A paradigm shift in Natech risk management with resilience engineering notions.

Abstract

An increasing trend in the number of reported natural hazard-triggered technological accidents (Natechs) worldwide has led to the development of contributions in Natech risk assessment and management, risk reduction and emergency response strategies, risk communication, risk perception, and risk governance. Yet, although some studies have underscored the need for resilient industries, only recently researchers have called for an area-wide perspective, where a paradigm shift in Natech risk management fosters a holistic systems approach. That approach should contemplate the facilities and their surrounding environment, and encourage multi-stakeholder interaction to advocate for more resilient societies. However, there are currently no methodologies for evaluating, rating, and certifying industrial facilities' level of preparedness to Natech risk; nor are there any tools available to inform the governments and the public, on industry's Natech risk management practices. In response to this need, we propose Natech RateME, a comprehensive, area-wide risk management, and rating system framework. The proposed framework is premised on a probabilistic risk assessment methodology, that can support industrial facilities' management of onsite and offsite risk from complex events and that rates their performance in terms of minimum life losses. By evaluating their safety performance, their engagement to develop cooperation mechanisms with local authorities and neighboring communities, and their commitment to disclose risk information, among other aspects, the framework, and the rating system, seek to contribute to overall territorial resilience. To do so, Natech RateME considers the interaction between infrastructure systems present at industrial parks, the technical and organizational systems, governance, risk communication, and community participation, constituting the first approach to support the strengthening of prevention and mitigation measures by enhancing facilities' and governments' abilities to manage Natech risk comprehensively.

Section snippets

Introduction and background

Escalation in the number of natural and technological accidents and proliferation of affected people and economic losses over the past century (EM-DAT, 2019; MunichRe, 2018), as well as the consequences of their conjoint occurrence, the so-called Natechs, have resulted in a growing international concern. The need to be better prepared for and manage Natech risk, due to the severity of their consequences and their capacity to affect large areas has been highlighted. Examples include the case of

Framework categories and category component's

Natech RateME is a comprehensive area-wide Natech risk management and rating system framework composed of categories, category components, and evaluation criteria, to evaluate the performance of industrial parks and facilities when faced with Natech scenarios. The framework proposes a rating system premised on a probabilistic risk assessment methodology to evaluate the performance of an industrial facility impacted by an earthquake.

Framework categories were identified through an analysis of

The rating system: a probabilistic risk assessment approach

To determine a measurable quantity that considers the overall effects of the framework's evaluation criteria on the facility performance, we propose the main structure for a performance rating system based on a probabilistic risk assessment methodology that contemplates the geographical context of the industrial park/facility to estimate its level of Natech risk. The rating system development contemplates the ideas of the Resilience-based Earthquake Design Initiative REDi rating system. Its

Conclusions

Recognizing the embeddedness of hazards and disasters in societies, especially those which are increasingly vulnerable and exposed to natural hazards, requires broadening the perspective of risk reduction efforts to better prepare for such hazards. This is especially factual when looking at all the interrelated factors that make societies more vulnerable. Such factors include population growth, urban development in hazard-prone territories, environmental degradation, increasing

Author contribution statement

Cruz, Ana Maria: Conceptualization, validation, formal analysis, resources, writing - original draft, writing - review & editing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. SuarezPaba, Maria Camila: Conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing - original draft, writing - review & editing, visualization, funding acquisition.

Funding

This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Japan (Kaken Grant 17K01336, April 2017–March 2021); and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT scholarship, 2016–2019).

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Earthquakes may cause severe damage to the technological infrastructure and to transport systems handling hazardous substances as oil, natural gas and flammable/toxic chemicals. Earthquake damage may trigger Natech scenarios involving the release of hazardous substances, resulting in major accidents including fires, explosions, and toxic releases. Most of the methodologies developed for the quantitative assessment of risk related to Natech scenarios only focus on stationary installations handling hazardous substances, as chemical and process plants. However, pipelines are widely used for the long-range bulk transport of hazardous materials. In the present study an innovative methodology was developed to address the Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) of Natech scenarios triggered by earthquakes involving pipelines handling hazardous substances. Specific vulnerability models are used to assess pipeline failure probability. A new specific procedure was developed to carry out the calculation of consequences and risk along the main dimension of the pipeline. The innovative methodology developed allows for the first time the calculation of local specific individual risk and societal risk due to Natech events along the route of the pipeline. Two different case studies are discussed to provide a notional application of the proposed methodology and to demonstrate the applicability of the approach to a real-scale pipeline risk assessment problem. The results obtained from the case studies show the relevance of risk due to Natech scenarios involving pipelines with respect to that deriving from possible conventional failures, as well as the potentialities of the proposed approach in considering different intensities of seismic hazard along the route of the pipeline. Thus, the methodology developed provides an important support to risk-informed decision making in the management and mitigation of major accidents involving pipelines.
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During their service lives, the component of industrial facilities such as tanks might be subject to blast loading from malicious or accidental explosions (Antonioni et al., 2009; Misuri et al., 2020; Ding et al., 2022; Ovidi et al., 2021; Tugnoli et al., 2022). Past events have shown the vulnerability of industrial tanks to blast loading (e.g., Ibitayo et al., 2004, Zio and Aven, 2013, HSE, 2009) Similarly, past events have highlighted the severe consequences of blast loading in industrial facilities, which can include fatalities, economic losses, and environmental impacts due to the release of hazardous materials (e.g., Marsh and Mclennan, 2016; Damle et al., 2021; Araki et al., 2021, Suarez-Paba and Cruz, 2022). The organization of industrial facilities requires optimizing the production characteristics considering possible natural or man-made threats to key structural elements, columns (Singh et al., 2020) and beams (Stochino et al., 2021), or to the vulnerable components, steel tanks, and their consequences (e.g., Salvado et al., 2017, Mayorga et al., 2019; Zhou and Reniers, 2020; Lan et al., 2022).
Blast hazards represent a serious threat to industrial facilities. Past explosion incidents highlight the severe consequences of such events. A probabilistic approach can help industries and designers mitigate the consequences of blast loading by better organizing industrial plants. In this paper, we propose a physics-based probabilistic demand model and formulate the reliability problem for industrial steel tanks under blast loading. Starting from a deterministic Single-Degree-of-Freedom (SDOF) model based on Donnell shallow-shell theory, we develop a correction term that improves the model accuracy due to the simplified representation of the SDOF model. We use Bayesian inference to estimate the unknown model parameters in the correction term and model error, combining predictions from the SDOF model with experimental data and any prior information. To illustrate, we estimate the reliability of an example cylindrical steel tanks subject to blast loading considering three damage levels. The reliability analysis yields a set of fragility curves that represent the conditional probability of the bending failure of the tank given a scaled distance, as the load intensity measure. Then, as an example, we use the developed fragility functions to estimate the reliability of a chemical industrial facility considering different explosion scenarios.
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A paradigm shift in Natech risk management: Development of a rating system framework for evaluating the performance of industry

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Introduction and background

Framework categories and category component's

The rating system: a probabilistic risk assessment approach

Conclusions

Author contribution statement

Funding

Declaration of competing interest

Eng. Geol.

J. Hazard Mater.

Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf.

Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf.

Procedia Economics, and Finance

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

J. Loss Prev. Process. Ind.

J. Loss Prev. Process. Ind.

J. Loss Prev. Process. Ind.

Progress in Disaster Science

J. Loss Prev. Process. Ind.

Saf. Sci.

Process Saf. Environ. Protect.

J. Loss Prev. Process. Ind.

Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

ISA (Instrum. Soc. Am.) Trans.

Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf.

Procedia Economics and Finance

J. Hazard Mater.

Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf.

Saf. Sci.

Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf.

J. Loss Prev. Process. Ind.

Process Saf. Environ. Protect.

Int. J. Prod. Econ.

J. Loss Prev. Process. Ind.

Sustainable Cities and Society

J. Loss Prev. Process. Ind.

Saf. Sci.

REDi™ Rating System: Resilience-Based Earthquake Design Initiative for the Next Generation of Buildings in

Consequences of critical infrastructure interdependencies: lessons from the 2004 hurricane season in Florida

Int. J. Crit. Infrastruct.

Guidance for California accidental release prevention (CalARP) program seismic assessments

Análisis de riesgo en instalaciones industriales

Guidelines for Chemical Process Quantitative Risk Analysis

Guidelines for Process Safety Metrics

Process Safety Leading, and Lagging Metrics

Comparison of FEMA P-58 with Other Building Seismic Risk Assessment Methods

Chemical Process Safety: Fundamentals with Applications

Industry preparedness for earthquakes and earthquake-triggered hazmat accidents in the 1999 kocaeli earthquake

Earthq. Spectra

State of the art in natech risk management

Emerging issues for natech disaster risk management in europe

J. Risk Res.

Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act (EPCRA)

Turkey earthquake of august 17, 1999 (M7.4). An EQE briefing

Rapid visual screening of buildings for potential seismic hazards: a handbook

Rapid visual screening of buildings for potential seismic hazards: supporting documentation