A critical look at risk analysis of disasters

Abstract

Recent natural and man-made worldwide disasters show an increased vulnerability of society. The risk analysis of disasters is an important component of life quality for all industrial societies. However, comparison between hazards, vulnerabilities and risks causes many difficulties. A critical look at the methodologies for risk assessment of disasters is presented in this paper. The main issues of safety measures and risk-analysis are considered. Special attention is paid to survivability and robustness analysis of infrastructure, population and environment at a disaster occurrence.

Risk assessment of oil and gas producing areas in Siberia

“…This risk also depends on the vulnerability, survivability and security of oil and gas producing areas. Thus, the risk assessment formula can be presented as follows [8]:…”

Probabilistic models for risk assessment of disasters

“…Thus, risk function can be defined as a function of initial event and core damage event sequence Risk = function (Initial Event frequency × Core Damage Event sequences) (1) Damage development depends not only on system vulnerability but also on structure survivability and availability of systems of active and passive safety. This is why a risk function for evolving critical systems should be defined in the following form [3] Risk = function (Initial Event frequency × Vulnerability × Core Damage Event sequences × Survivability × Safety)…”

“…According to the nature of process, the answer for (4) can be obtained on the basis of cumulative model or stochastic processes of crosses model. The peculiarities of such models have been discussed in details in the works [3,4].…”

“…Safety factors, criteria, models and methods of risk assessment are permanently discussed in literature [1,2]. Based on analysis of theory and practices on safety measures for technical systems a number of problems in risk analysis methodology can be formulated [3].…”