An innovative methodology for quickly modeling the spatial-temporal evolution of domino accidents triggered by fire

Abstract

Past accident analyses indicate that fire escalation is responsible for most of the domino effects that happened in the process industries. The evolution of domino accidents triggered by fire is different from domino accidents triggered by other primary scenarios, since the escalation caused by heat radiation is delayed with respect to the start of the fire. In this study, a methodology involving a Domino Evolution Graph (DEG) model and a Minimum Evolution Time (MET) algorithm is proposed to model the spatial-temporal evolution of domino accidents. Synergistic effects and parallel effects of the spatial evolution, as well as superimposed effects of the temporal evolution possibly occurring in complex domino evolution processes, are considered in this study. A case study demonstrates that the methodology is able to not only capture the spatial-temporal dimension but also to overcome the limitation of the “probit model” w.r.t only able to estimate the damage probability of the first level propagation. Besides, different from simulation or Bayesian approaches, our methodology can quickly provide evolution graphs (paths), the evolution time and the corresponding probability given a primary scenario. Therefore our approach can also be applied to domino risk assessment within an industrial park level and provide support for the allocation decision of safety and security resources.