Consequence-based Approach Research Articles

Fire and Explosion Consequence Analysis of Occupied Buildings in an LPG Storage Facility in Southern Nigeria

The purpose of this work was to carry out an evaluation of occupied buildings from the devastating impact of an explosion in a Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) bulk storage facility with the intention to provide information on blast requirements of the buildings and make layout modification as needed using the consequence-based approach. The simulation was done using DNV’s Process Hazard Analysis Software Tool (PHAST) and the process data were obtained from a process plant located in the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria. Three major scenarios; catastrophic rupture, full bore rupture was considered for a 6-inch pipe and fixed duration release of the stored LPG and propane gas using the TNO multi-energy method to determine the Maximum Credible Event on the occupied buildings within the facility From the study, the catastrophic rupture of LPG vessel #18 at 2/F weather category gave the worst impact with an overpressure effect of 0.7barg at a hazard distance of 166.959m. The thermal radiation intensity of 37.5KW/m2 due to Jet fire from the fixed duration release of Propane vessel #22 at 2/F weather category was found to produce the greatest consequence/impact at a hazard distance of 180.72m. The results from this work show that most of the occupied buildings within the location are in the vicinity of the effect zone of both explosion overpressure and Jet fire thermal radiation.

An Emerging Human Right to Protection against Unjustified Dismissal

Abstract Although a right to protection against unjustified dismissal is not widely recognised in human rights law, the European Court of Human Rights has begun to use Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights to develop a general right based on the adverse consequences to ordinary private life caused by an unjustified dismissal. Instead of requiring the employer’s reason for the dismissal to be connected to an aspect of an employee’s private and family life in order to engage Article 8, the Court’s new, broader approach focuses on major adverse effects or consequences caused by dismissals to an employee’s family life, personal and professional relationships, to self-respect, and to their chosen way of life and career. The consequence-based approach permits the application of Article 8 whatever reason the employer puts forward for the dismissal. The article assesses the extent and limits of the protection against unjustified dismissal under the Convention as a result primarily of this extension from a reason-based approach to a consequence-based approach to Article 8, an approach that was confirmed by the Grand Chamber in Denisov v Ukraine.

Impact of Consequence Information on Insurance Choice

Insurance choices are often hard to rationalize by standard theory and frequently appear sub-optimal. A key reason may be that people are unable to map the cost-sharing features of plans to their distribution of financial consequences. We develop and experimentally test a decision aid that provides this mapping to simplify comparisons of plan options. In two experiments mirroring typical health insurance decisions, we find that when people choose plans using standard feature-based information, they violate dominance at high rates. Our distribution-based decision aid substantially reduces dominance violations, and also changes choice patterns in situations where there is no dominant option. Choice patterns under feature-based menus can be most easily rationalized by models of heuristic choices, such as minimizing premium or deductible. With the decision aid, though, significantly more people have choice patterns that are better explained by expected utility theory. We compare our distribution-based approach to an alternative of providing estimates of the expected value of costs, which is the most common decision-support available in most insurance markets. Providing expected values affects choices in a similar direction as our consequence-based approach, but in a more muted fashion, and is only about half as effective at reducing dominance violations.

A consequences-based approach for the selection of relevant accident scenarios in emerging technologies

The rapid progress of innovative biorefinery technologies raises the issue of emerging risk and major accident hazard in biorefineries, as process safety aspects of such technologies are not developing at the same pace with respect to their dissemination and scale-up.To address such problem, in the present work a consequence-based approach was integrated in the framework of a consolidated QRA methodology (ARAMIS), formerly developed in the context of Seveso Directive in the process industries (mainly oil&gas). Among all the possible scenarios identified using ARAMIS, Relevant Accident Scenarios (RAS) were selected by calculating hazard distances using threshold values for the evaluation of damages on human target derived from existing regulations on the control of major accident hazards.The method has been described and used to quantify the risk associated to a biorefinery process: the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass materials to levulinic acid and gamma-valerolactone, where the use of hazardous substances and severe process conditions are required.Using the proposed approach allowed to reduce the number of scenarios to be retained for further analysis. The RAS resulted 1/3 of the scenarios initially identified, simplifying the rest of the risk assessment procedure.The integrated methodology enabled to depict a risk figure for the plant analysed which is not over-conservative, being beneficial during the risk management phase, when risk reduction measures have to be selected and implemented in order to achieve risk tolerance.

Inherent Safety Assessment of LNG Fuelled Ships and Bunkering Operations: a Consequence-based Approach

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is becoming a viable, environmental-friendly alternative to marine fuel oil for ship propulsion. However, LNG flammability induces relevant safety concerns due to fire and explosion hazards. The present contribution is aimed at the safety assessment of onshore bunkering configurations for marine fuel systems, with particular reference to LNG technologies. A specific review of bunkering methods, including connection to the ship fuel system, is carried out to provide a knowledge background. Moreover, the conventional process configurations based on intermediate fuel oil (IFO) are taken into account for a comparison between process alternatives. A consequence-based approach is followed to develop a set of key performance indicators aimed at evaluating and comparing the inherent safety of LNG and IFO systems. The results obtained allow for a clear identification of critical process units and operations, indicating that conventional IFO bunkering is inherently safer when compared to LNG. Therefore, safety aspects need to be balanced with environmental benefits, in the perspective of sustainable development of LNG supply chain for marine applications.

Interdependent critical infrastructures resilience: methodology and case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a coherence analysis to evaluate the resilience for a critical infrastructure (CI). This is the new way to evaluate the CI and demonstrate that the authors need to pass from the protection towards resilience. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use two approaches for this research. First is a consequence-based approach to evaluate the resilience. This approach has been used many times for evaluating the interdependencies between CIs. The second is a systemic approach to characterize the system and doing the coherence analysis. Findings – This paper presents a methodology to evaluate the coherence in a context of CIs protection. The coherence analysis in resilience is a new concept and the first result to the application seems very good for the user of the research. Originality/value – The originality of this paper is the coherence analysis applied to a resilience evaluation. The criteria for coherence analysis is innovative and it is a new way to consider the resilience and the relation between an organization and it is partners. Another value is the need for a wider scope in the analysis of hazards and how to address them that includes the infrastructure system itself, but also other related organizations and infrastructure systems.

Evaluation of the consequences of road system failure on other critical infrastructures

Every Critical Infrastructure (CI) uses a road system for its operations, whether to receive resources or to execute support activities. The road system may fail at any time and this could have repercussions on the CI's usage. With the methodology developed by the Centre risque & performance (CRP), it is possible to characterise and model the road system as a CI. Using a consequence-based approach, this paper proposes a simplified approach of addressing dependencies with the road system while evaluating interdependencies between CIs.

Safety assessment of envisaged systems for automotive hydrogen supply and utilization

A novel consequence-based approach was applied to the inherent safety assessment of the envisaged hydrogen production, distribution and utilization systems, in the perspective of the widespread hydrogen utilization as a vehicle fuel. Alternative scenarios were assessed for the hydrogen system chain from large scale production to final utilization. Hydrogen transportation and delivery was included in the analysis. The inherent safety fingerprint of each system was quantified by a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Rules for KPIs aggregation were considered for the overall assessment of the system chains. The final utilization stage resulted by large the more important for the overall expected safety performance of the system. Thus, comparison was carried out with technologies proposed for the use of other low emission fuels, as LPG and natural gas. The hazards of compressed hydrogen-fueled vehicles resulted comparable, while reference innovative hydrogen technologies evidenced a potentially higher safety performance. Thus, switching to the inherently safer technologies currently under development may play an important role in the safety enhancement of hydrogen vehicles, resulting in a relevant improvement of the overall safety performance of the entire hydrogen system.