A decision model to allocate protective safety barriers and mitigate domino effects

Abstract

In this paper, we present a model to support decision-makers about where to locate safety barriers and mitigate the consequences of an accident triggering cascade effects. Based on the features of an industrial area that may be affected by domino accidents, and knowing the characteristics of the safety barriers that can be installed to stall the fire propagation between installations, the decision model can help practitioners in their decision-making. The model can be effectively used to decide how to allocate a limited budget in terms of safety barriers. The goal is to maximize the time-to-failure of a chemical installation ensuring a worst case scenario approach. The model is mathematically stated and a flexible and effective solution approach, based on metaheuristics, is developed and tested on an illustrative case study representing a tank storage area of a chemical company. We show that a myopic optimization approach, which does not take into account knock-on effects possibly triggered by an accident, can lead to a distribution of safety barriers that are not effective in mitigating the consequences of a domino accident. Moreover, the optimal allocation of safety barriers, when domino effects are considered, may depend on the so-called cardinality of the domino effects.

A bibliometric analysis of peer-reviewed publications on domino effects in the process industry

“…Being in line with the hypothesis of Seveso-induced domino effect studies in Europe, as can be seen from Figure 2, European countries being Italy, Belgium, and The Netherlands are mainly affiliated with the research, followed by India and Canada. The connections between the nodes represent respective collaboration, with the highest collaborations between Belgium and TheNetherlands (e.g.,Janssens et al, 2015), Italy and Canada (e.g.,Khakzad et al, 2013), and India and Iran (e.g.,Abdolhamidzadeh et al, 2010). The countries with the highest contribution/cooperation in the domain of domino effects in the chemical industry.…”

Application of Graph Theory to Cost‐Effective Fire Protection of Chemical Plants During Domino Effects

“…A number of decision analysis techniques have been used for cost‐effective safety management of major accidents in the process/chemical industry, including analytic hierarchical process, limited memory influence diagrams, and linear programming …”

“…A number of decision analysis techniques have been used for cost-effective safety management of major accidents in the process/chemical industry, including analytic hierarchical process, (79,80) limited memory influence diagrams, (81) and linear programming. (31,82) Due to the conflicting nature of the influential decision criteria, however, it is usually unlikely to find a decision (i.e., a set of decision variables) that satisfies the influential criteria altogether. A Paretooptimal solution is a set of decision variables for which there is no other solution where the value of a criterion can be improved without either worsening the value of other criteria or at least keeping them unchanged.…”

“…As remarked by Janssens et al, (31) research studies dealing with the safety analysis of domino effects have mainly focused on an inherent safety management of domino effects, especially through dedicated index methodologies. (32)(33)(34)(35) Inherent safety measures are effective at the design stage (36)(37)(38)(39) and may constitute an optimal strategy to limit the occurrence of domino effects, for example, through appropriate ranking of equipment and layout definition.…”

EZID: A new approach to hazard identification during the design process by analysing energy transfers

“…Studies on the risk reduction process mostly propose methods or tools that manage [19], analyse [20] or assess [21] preventive measures. These articles help designers to compare and choose the safety measures to be integrated in their design.…”