A Roadmap for the Comprehensive Assessment of Natech Risk

Book excerpt: A Roadmap for the Comprehensive Assessment of Natech Risk: Management and Control of Technological Accidents Triggered by Natural Hazards in the Framework of Climate Change covers the latest advancements concerning the quantitative risk assessment and the management of cascading events involving technological accidents caused by natural hazards. These complex events are called Natech accidents, and their management and control are recognized as paramount priorities to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructures, and in particular of chemical and process facilities, in the framework of adaptation to climate change. The topic is introduced providing the description of past accidents, case-studies, and quantitative figures allowing the identification of the most vulnerable plant elements, of the complex features of accident scenarios, and of their rising trend possibly related to factors as climate change and growing industrialization. A state of the art of the available approaches to the assessment and management of Natech risk is provided. Advanced methodologies supporting a holistic approach to the assessment of scenarios driven by natural hazards are presented, enabling the identification and analysis of peculiar accident dynamics. In particular, the possible performance degradation of utilities and safety systems available on the sites and its role in accident initiation and escalation is addressed. Methodologies aiming at the assessment of the actual performance of safety barriers and safety systems during or immediately after the impact of a natural event are presented. Recent tools and data supporting the quantitative assessment of these features in the overall assessment of Natech risk are reported, highlighting the similarities with other typologies of cascading accidents. Several case studies are presented in the book, and each methodology presented is provided with an illustrative case-study providing guidance to its application. - Provides user-friendly description of methodologies suitable for the application to complex industrial problems - Includes worked case-studies to explicitly drive the application of the proposed methodologies - Offers state-of-the-art, available tools to perform the assessment of Natech risk to provide a quick toolbox to be applied to complex industrial problems