Quantitative Risk Analysis on Rail Transportation of Hazardous Materials

Abstract

The hazardous nature of the chemical materials is of significant concern in the economic viability of rail transportation globally. The potential risks of these materials to cause severe health impairments and catastrophic accidents have been widely studied and reported. Moreover, several models have been employed for assessing the risks associated with transporting hazardous materials by rail. However, a more holistic, quantitative, and robust model should incorporate more potential risk-triggered criteria, especially those causing severe health loss and devastating consequences like vapor cloud explosion. This study develops a risk assessment model by incorporating potential health risk factors and the obstacle circumstances. The potential risk factors are population density, route distance from residential areas, and the availability of sensitive third parties for health consequences. The proposed model utilizes Bayesian networks for causality modeling of the material release scenarios and fuzzy set theory for estimating the health effects and severity impact coefficient. Finally, individual risk curves and safe distances from the railway are developed. A real rail system for gasoline transportation in Tehran is investigated to evaluate the model’s effectiveness. The study provides panoramic leverages for risk-managed decision-making for safely transporting hazardous material by rail.

Risk assessment of methanol storage tank fire accident using hybrid FTA-SPA

“…The result shows that the access level of this storage tank operation is general safety. According to Eq (16), the probability of a tank fire is 2.58E-1/year, which is lower than the reliability of the safety state of…”

“…Many storage fire accidents have occurred throughout history, as evidenced by the Bunce field fire and the Jaipur oil depot fire that have caused severe environmental pollution, substantial economic losses and direct tens of casualties [13,14]. These catastrophic incidents mainly rely on two possible causes: the inherent nature of chemicals and the involved quantity stored on-site [15,16]. In that sense, the safe operation of storage tanks while mitigating the fire consequences has become more challenging.…”

“…Among risk assessment techniques, Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is excellent at presenting how the system resists singular or numerous initiating faults [21,22]. Since the creation of FTA, it has been explored in many fields, including marine [23], oil and gas [24], petrochemical processes [25], refineries [26], nuclear power plants [27], and Hazmat transportation [16,28] which show that it can be a suited technique to reveal the fundamental contributing factors to an undesirable event correctly [29]. FTA has multiple applications in assessing safety, security and reliability at different phases of the system, but it has some drawbacks [9].…”

Fault tree analysis improvements: A bibliometric analysis and literature review

“…FTA was initially proposed in 1962 at "Bell Telephone Laboratories," associated with the system safety assessment of the "Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launch control system." 9 Due to its robustness, efficiency, and applicability, this technique has been successfully applied in different industrial sectors, including marine and offshore, [12][13][14][15] railways and transports, [16][17][18] nuclear, 19,20 oil and gas, 17,21,22 and aerospace. [23][24][25][26] The primary FTA sources and guidelines are IEC 61025, 27 CCPS, 27 NASA, 28 and NUREG-0492.…”

Risk Assessment Framework for Selecting the Safer Route for Hazmat Transportation Based on Accident Database and Vulnerability Models

“…Mohammadfam et al used bowtie analysis in a Bayesian network to analyze cause–consequence relationships of material leakage from trucks. This work was extended by the same authors for rail transportation incorporating several factors contributing to health and safety risks in the risk function developed using fuzzy set theory …”