A novel extension of DEMATEL approach for probabilistic safety analysis in process systems

Abstract

Quantitative risk assessment (QRA) techniques methodically assess the likelihood, impact, and subsequently the risk of adverse events. In a typical QRA method, one of the main intentions is to identify the critical root events which mostly contribute to the risk of the top event (TE) and requiring subsequent corrective actions (CAs). Finding the critical events which contribute to the risk is significantly dependent on the assumptions and methods applied to integrate the probabilities of different events and these events may have really low probability of occurrence. Thus, the probability reduction of the critical root events and subsequently the system’s failure does not lead to an optimal solution. For this reason, ranking the CAs without consideration of several aspects such as their influence on root events probability, inter-relationships, and direct/indirect cost, is not an appropriate approach. This study aims to introduce an approach to deal with the aforementioned situations. A novel extension to DEMATEL (decision making trial and evaluation laboratory) named Pythagorean fuzzy DEMATEL is proposed on a common probabilistic safety analysis. As a case study, a collapse in an offshore facility platform (including 42 basic events and corresponding 30 CAs) is considered to illustrate the effectiveness of the presented approach. The application of the model confirms its robustness in prioritizing critical root events and CAs compared with a conventional model, consideration of the influencing factors, and a dynamic and flexible structure.