Domino effects in chemical factories and clusters: An historical perspective and discussion

Abstract

Major accidents in Western countries, receiving a lot of media attention in the 1970s, are starting point for research into internal and external domino-effects in the chemical and petrochemical sectors and clusters. Initially, these reports are published by government institutions and government-related research centres. With the upcoming quantitative risk analyses in the 1970s and 1980s, the so-called 'coloured books', published in the Netherlands, play a prominent role in quantifying these dominoeffects. Since the mid-1990s, the second European Seveso Directive encourages scientific research on domino-effects, shown in substantially growth of academic publications on the topic. Research in Western countries is dominated by risk assessments, probabilities, and failure mechanisms are calculated for the complex phenomenon of domino effects and its consequences. Previous works are closely related to political, official and private decision-making. A transition towards risk management and specifically dynamic risk assessment is still in its infancy. A future transition is necessary to understand initial scenarios as starting points for domino effects and also the spatial-temporal evolution of events which is necessary to identify the most probable sequence of events during domino effects. We will demonstrate via an exemplary case study the difference between the a conventional (static) and a dynamic method in modelling and risk assessment of domino effects. In India a wake-up call for domino-effects occurs in the mid-1990s. Chinese publications on dominoeffects in the international scientific press appear from the mid-2000s onwards. Due to a rapid industrialisation, the numbers in China country are overwhelming, versus chemical companies, as versus of many major accidents in this sector.

Analysis and Characterization of Risk Methodologies Applied to Industrial Parks

“…When analyzing the combined effects of overpressure, heat radiation, and fragmentation, the need to establish their causes and consequences arises simultaneously. Traditional methodologies apply a graphical approach, the most representative approaches applied to domino effect analysis are the fault tree (FTA), event tree (ETA), and bowtie; these tools originated in the chemical and offshore oil and gas industry, and have been successfully applied in the analysis of industrial parks [163,164]. Energy barrier model is widely applied to characterize the performance of the safety barriers [58,152], and it is applied successfully in the process industry, but not in industrial parks, so its applicability in this type of scenario must be considered.…”

A Systematic Literature Review on Safety Research Related to Chemical Industrial Parks

“…The major Mexico City accident, which happened in 1984 and is still today the most deadly domino effect that ever happened worldwide, was the reason for this. In 2012, the Seveso III Directive replaced the Seveso II Directive and the hazardous materials classification was, for instance, updated [14,21,26]. After the Gu-mi accidents, Korean laws and governing regulations for hazardous chemical materials have been improved, where their enforcement was enhanced, especially for toxic substances [27].…”

“…The earliest safety management approach for single-plants can be traced back to the end of the 20th century using the safety management system (SMS) to control major accidents [21,26]. As a result, the use of SMSs has been emphasized in several relevant articles [26,[45][46][47].…”

“…With the increasing attention of domino effects, some analytical methods based on the so-called 'maximum credible accident propagation sequence' were coded for estimating the escalation probability and potential consequences. Khan and Abbasi thus developed the DOMIFFECT software for domino effect analysis, able to model the potential consequences of different domino scenarios [21].…”

“…Some papers present the analysis of major accidents in CIPs [7,16], and in some, specific types of accidents are identified. In addition to conventional chemical industrial risks, companies operating in CIPs are facing external risks caused by cross-border effects in which domino effects [21] and Natech events [22] have attracted much attention by researchers and authorities due to their happening from time to time worldwide. The accident evolution has been discussed in certain studies, leading to the development of tools of safety management and assessment [1,3,5,[21][22][23].…”