Safety analysis of fire evacuation from Drilling and Production Platforms (DPP)

Abstract

Offshore platforms are vulnerable to fire accidents and it is essential to conduct safety analysis in case of an evacuation and take measures to improve worker evacuation efficiency and reduce casualties. Based on the proposed Credible and Representative Fire Scenarios (CRFS) methodology, nine fire scenarios were selected and simulated. The safety analysis of fire evacuation was performed based on the coupled injury model and the modified social force model, while the effects of wind direction, wind speed, fire location and pre-evacuation time on the probability of death (POD) were investigated. The results demonstrated that the wind from the stern led to a higher coverage rate of smoke (CRS) on the decks and higher POD values. The wind from the bow, larboard and starboard sides was shown to be more conducive to the dissipation of smoke. As a result, the overall POD values were relatively low. The magnitude of wind speed affects the accumulation behavior of smoke between different decks, and the lower the wind speed, the higher the CRS on the decks and POD of the workers.The pool fire located on the lower deck was more likely to cause injuries than the fire on the working deck. In addition, it was found that the trend between POD and pre-evacuation time shows a non-linear relationship, thus the scenario with the most severe fire threat was used as an example for regression analysis. An approach was proposed to determine the fire-evacuation safety time windows in the event of a fire accident and the time windows in different areas of the nine selected scenarios were predicted. Finally, the time windows obtained from the regression curves and the proposed method were compared.