Emergency response in cascading scenarios triggered by natural events

Emergency response is a procedural safety barrier of paramount importance for the mitigation of fire scenarios and the prevention of escalation. However, in Natech scenarios, emergency response may be affected by the natural event impacting the site. Indeed, when contrasting Natech accidents, emergency responders have to face both the natural...

Dynamic-risk-informed safety barrier management: An application to cost-effective barrier optimization based on data from multiple sources

An integrated approach for performance assessment and management of safety barriers in a systemic manner is needed concerning the prevention and mitigation of major accidents in chemical process industries. Particularly, the effects of safety barriers on system risk reduction should be assessed in a dynamic manner to support the decision-making...

Integrated process safety and process security risk assessment of industrial cyber-physical systems in chemical plants

Aligned with the development needs of Industry 4.0, industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPSs) are widely applied to chemical facilities to facilitate so-called intelligent production processes. Meanwhile, emerging cyber-to-physical (C2P) risks are introduced due to the vulnerability of ICPSs to cyberattacks. An integrated safety and security...

Risk Analysis of Laboratory Fire Accidents in Chinese Universities by Combining Association Rule Learning and Fuzzy Bayesian Networks

Targeting the challenges in the risk analysis of laboratory fire accidents, particularly considering fire accidents in Chinese universities, an integrated approach is proposed with the combination of association rule learning, a Bayesian network (BN), and fuzzy set theory in this study. The proposed approach has the main advantages of deriving...

A Bayesian-network approach for assessing the probability of success of physical security attacks to offshore Oil&Gas facilities

Offshore Oil&Gas facilities are attractive targets of intentional malicious attacks (security attacks) that may trigger cascading events (e.g., the release and dispersion of hazardous material and/or energy, fires, explosions) with consequences on people, environment, and assets. The severity of these consequences is potentially similar to...

An integrated EDIB model for probabilistic risk analysis of natural gas pipeline leakage accidents

Natural gas pipeline construction is developing rapidly worldwide to meet the needs of international and domestic energy transportation. Meanwhile, leakage accidents occur to natural gas pipelines frequently due to mechanical failure, personal operation errors, etc., and induce huge economic property loss, environmental damages, and even...

A safety investment optimization model for power grid enterprises based on System Dynamics and Bayesian network theory

In recent years, frequent large-scale power grid accidents have caused serious economic losses and bad social impact, which has drawn great attention from power grid enterprises. As one of the key elements of production, safety investment plays an important role in improving the safety level and reducing accident loss. In this paper, System...

Resilience-based approach to safety barrier performance assessment in process facilities

The performance assessment of safety barriers is essential to find vulnerable elements in a safety barrier system. Traditional performance assessment approaches mainly focus on using several static indicators for quantifying the performance of safety barriers. However, with the increasing complexity of the system, emerging hazards are highly...

Resilience-based optimal firefighting to prevent domino effects in process plants

Domino effects triggered by fire can cause extremely severe damages to the chemical and process plants. In the need of a more effective prevention of fire domino effects, the present study focuses on firefighting which has received less attention compared to passive and active fire protection systems. Considering both the vulnerability and...

Cost-effective fire protection of chemical plants against domino effects

The propagation of fire-induced domino effects in chemical plants largely depends on the primary fire scenario, on separation distances between the units, and on the presence of fire protection barriers. Passive and active safety barriers are widely employed to prevent or delay the initiation or propagation of domino effects. In the present...

A Bayesian-Based System to Assess Wave-Driven Flooding Hazards on Coral Reef-Lined Coasts

Many low-elevation, coral reef-lined, tropical coasts are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, sea level rise, and wave-induced flooding. The considerable morphological diversity of these coasts and the variability of the hydrodynamic forcing that they are exposed to make predicting wave-induced flooding a challenge. A process-based...

Application of dynamic Bayesian network to performance assessment of fire protection systems during domino effects

The propagation of fire in chemical plants – also known as fire domino effects - largely depends on the performance of add-on passive and active protection systems such as sprinkler systems, water deluge systems, emergency shut down and emergency blow down systems, fireproofing, and emergency response. Although such safety barriers are widely...

Security vulnerability assessment of gas pipelines using discrete-time Bayesian network

Security of chemical and oil & gas facilities became a pressing issue after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, due to relevant quantities of hazardous substances that may be present in these sites. Oil & gas pipelines, connecting such facilities, might be potential targets for intentional attacks. The majority of methods addressing pipeline...