Abstract
The occurrence of Natech (natural hazard triggering technological disasters) accidents has generated a reflection about the need to manage adequately the risk to people, to the environment, and to the infrastructures subjected to natural events. For this reason, academia and industry have increased research in the process safety area in the last decade, strengthening quantitative risk analysis (QRA) methodologies for Natech events. However, these methodologies have some gaps that must be closed for a better decision-making process. In this communication a comparative analysis of the existing Natech QRA approaches is done, to highlight features and differences and to identify main gaps that should be addressed in future research. It can be mentioned that all the analyzed methodologies, which have been applied to floods, earthquakes, and lightning, are based on an initial one developed in 2007. The critical gap is that in all these methodologies, the final step is the risk calculation based on fatalities, and they do not consider the area-wide as an essential element in the risk analysis process.
Highlights
Hazards for people and the environment can emerge when the technological and natural worlds meet each other, and Natech events are testimony of that
Cruz and Suarez-Paba [3], and Suarez-Paba et al [4] carried out a qualitative meta-analysis of Natech research, analyzing the quantitative and qualitative approaches have been developed to address Natech risk management; it was found that quantitative methodologies have been designed for earthquakes, while events like landslides and extreme temperatures have been rather scarcely studied as a leading cause of Natechs
Caputo et al [5] made an exhaustive study of the existing methodologies for the quantitative risk analysis of the seismic impact on chemical process plants, reaching the conclusion that more complex risk assessment methodologies should be developed; Caputo et al [6] developed as well a methodology to estimate the resilience of process plants, applying it to the specific case of earthquake impact Mesa-Gómez et al [7] presented a state of the art about Natech qualitative, semi-quantitative, and quantitative analysis methodologies for single and multi-hazard approaches
Summary
Hazards for people and the environment can emerge when the technological and natural worlds meet each other, and Natech events are testimony of that. A qualitative methodology to assess the Natech risk in urban areas was proposed [10] This methodology considers domino effects, consequences for people, and damage to lifelines in the surrounding area of an industrial plant; the principal limitation is that due to its qualitative approach, a detailed Natech risk analysis is needed. Antonioni et al [11] presented an application of quantitative risk assessment, with a domino effect approach, to an industrial park These authors achieved to incorporate domino scenarios in a methodology to evaluate their consequences in the area-wide using human vulnerability models; the central gap is that the methodology does not take into account natural events as hazards, i.e., Natech events are not included. The main questions that are raised are: What are the differences between current
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