Natural Hazards: Systematic Assessment of Their Contribution to Risk and Their Consequences

Abstract

The significance of event scenarios from a variety of natural hazards-from seismotectonic over meteorological, hydrological up to biological ones-to all types of industrial facilitieshas been recognized in the near past and needs to be addressed systematically in the safety assessment. The most recent approaches for assessing the risk contribution from these hazards and their consequences start with a site-specific qualitative as well as quantitative screening of those individual hazards and event combinations with such hazards, which can be directly related, correlated, or occur independently during the mission time of another. In the second step, for those hazards and hazard combinations remaining with a non-negligible occurrence frequency, a detailed analysis of the facility-specific event scenario including interdependencies between the hazards to be considered, and the safety features and countermeasures in the facility being investigated is conducted in order to estimate the corresponding risk contribution and consequences.