natural disasters assessment and management

8/9/2019 Natural Disasters Assessment and Management

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Proceedings of the 1st AUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014

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Natural Disasters Assessment and Management in Petrochemical Industries: AReview

Mimi HaryaniDepartment of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia, email:[email protected]

Y. Alhamdani, M.N. YacobUniversiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia, [email protected]

Abstract: Natural disasters can be a causative factor to secondary catastrophic events posing a multi-threat to the surroundingenvironment. This scenario is experienced when a disaster (e.g. earthquake or flood) strikes inherently hazardous industrializedareas causing natural hazard-triggered technological accidents (NaTech). Chemical and petrochemical industries are amongthose that are highly vulnerable to natural disasters. NaTech events showed a rise in the last three decades necessitating much

of attention towards the development of systematic methods to assess, mitigate and prevent the NaTech-associated risks. Thisreview paper discusses several high profile NaTech events and summarizes some of the methods available for NaTech riskassessment. Natech risk management and prevention strategies as well as consideration of NaTech in process design are alsodiscussed. Based on our extensive study, there is yet any specific risk management program or regulation that takes NaTechrisk into consideration. Way forward is to integrate between NaTech management with the already existing technological riskmanagement frameworks, legislations and policies. Land-use and risk mapping strategies would be excellent tools formanaging and preventing NaTech based risks. NaTech should be considered in petro(chemical) plant design besides the otherrisk factors to minimize the loss of lives and properties upon the occurrence of unwanted disastrous event .

Keywords: Natural disasters; NaTech events; Assessment; Petrochemical industries; NaTech management.

1 INTRODUCTION

Natural disasters can be a causative factor tosecondary catastrophic events posing a multi-threat tothe surrounding environment. Natural hazard-triggered technological accidents (also known asNaTech) refer to the technological accidents causedby natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanesand floods (Krausmann et al., 2010). It is broadlyknown that chemical and petrochemical industries areinherently hazardous to workers, surroundingcommunities as well as the environment. Hence, suchindustries are among those that are most vulnerable to

natural disasters. Chemical and petrochemicalaccidents triggered by natural disasters could result insevere damages including loss of containment ofhazardous materials (Hazmat), oil spills posingenvironmental pollution, fires and explosions leadingto fatalities, injuries, and economic losses (Krausmannet al., 2011). The number of NaTech events is actuallyinsignificant compared to the accidents attributed tohuman factors and process failures. However,NaTechs have shown a rise in the last three decades(Cozzani et al., 2010).

Literature shows a growing concern towards chemicaland petrochemical accidents caused by naturaldisasters either for offshore or onshore facilities.

Showalter and Myers (1994) conducted one of the

first studies on NaTech events in the U.S. between1980 and 1989 based on a survey of State EmergencyManagement Agencies. The finding was majority ofNaTech accidents are attributed to earthquakes (228reported incidents), followed by hurricanes (26),floods (16), lightnings (15), winds (13) and storms (7)(Cruz et al., 2004). Similar study was carried out bySengul (2005) also in the U.S. between 1990 and 2003but relying on chemical accident releases reported toU.S. Federal databases. The study reveals thatweather-related NaTechs represented more than 80%of NaTech-related accidents (Cruz and Krausmann,

2009).

Studies have been done to correlate the damageseverity as a result of NaTech events with the age anddesign of the plant as well as to identify the vulnerableequipment to a certain type of NaTech (Renni et al.,2010). A study by Krausmann et al. (2010) thatanalysed the impact of the Wenchuan earthquake inyear 2008 on industrial facilities finds that thecollapse of concrete-structured warehouses, officesand manufacturing buildings was the main cause offatalities, injuries and damage to the facilities. The

subsequent damages and failure modes, as well as theHazmat releases mechanism are similar to those


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Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014 Proceedings of the 1st AUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster

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commonly caused by other earthquake-based NaTechaccidents (Krausmann et al., 2010).

The prevention of NaTechs and mitigation of theirimpacts require systematic tools to assess the NaTech-prone areas and NaTech risks, as well as the

vulnerability of industrial equipment. In this regard,there are progressively increasing efforts related to thedevelopment of risk assessment methods for NaTechaccidents. Some notable examples of the NaTechs riskassessment methods as well as efforts for managingand preventing the aftermaths following suchdisastrous events in petro(chemical) related industriesare discussed in Section 3.

2 NATECH ACCIDENTS IN CHEMICAL ANDPETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRIES

In the last two decades, chemical and petrochemicalindustries have experienced a significant number ofNaTech accidents causing Hazmat releases, oilspillages, severe damage to the industrial propertiesand economical losses. Marsh and McLennan, 1997pointed out that around 8% of the hundred mostsevere accidents in hydrocarbon-chemical industriesaround the world over the last 30 years is attributed tonatural disasters (Steinberg, 2003). An upward trendin the number of Natechs is also observed in the U.S.between 1980 and 1989 (Showalter and Myers, 1994)(Cruz, 2005). Through the period of 1994-2011,

several countries experienced severe NaTech eventsdue to natural disasters which are initiated eithergeologically (i.e. earthquakes) or meteorologically(i.e. floods, hurricanes and lightning). This sectionsummarizes several of the most severe NaTechaccidents ever occurred in the past two decades.

The Northridge earthquake in California in 1994caused around 134-139 Hazmat release incidences asdocumented by the Los Angeles County FireDepartment Health Hazardous Materials Division(HHMD) (Steinberg, 2003; Michael and Ronald,

1997). This number of releases is almost three timesmore than the number of Hazmat releases reportedduring the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 (Cruz etal., 2004). Releases from petroleum pipelinesrecorded a total of 870,550 L (230,000 gal). A loss ofUS$15 million is recorded as the emergency responseand clean-up costs. Hazmat releases from othersources including natural gas pipelines, tank-car andtank truck were also reported (Michael and Ronald,1997).

The 7.4 Richter-scale earthquake in Kocaeli in 1999

was reported as one of the deadliest earthquakes inTurkey (Steinberg et al., 2004). It served as an alertcall rising the attention of authorities, industries and

academia to the massive destruction and risk posed byNaTech disasters (Picou, 2009). The earthquakestruck Turkey's largest refinery plant triggering largefires, Hazmat releases, oil spills and severe damagesto the refinery (Girgin, 2011). In addition, more than350 industrial facilities in Kocaeli reported damagesof their plants. Also approximately 6.5 million kg ofhazardous anhydrous ammonia was released into theair, water and soil from ruptured tanks at one of theindustrial chemical facility because of this disaster.Over 50,000 kg of diesel fuel leaked into a localwaterway (Izmit Bay) and over 1.2 million kg ofliquid oxygen from impacted storage tanks in a gascompany was released into the environment. A seriesof fires in a petrochemical tank farm and severalchemical storage facilities released 350,000 m3 ofcrude oil and naphtha into the atmosphere (Cruz,

2003).

In Southern France in 2002, heavy flood struckseveral hydrocarbon storage facilities causing severedamage to electrical equipment i.e. pumps and motors,damage to safety systems i.e. gas detectors,emergency water systems, and other monitoringsystems as well as leakage of hazardous materialsincluding hydrogen chloride and sulphuric acid(Vallee, 2003). Also in 2002 in the Czech Republic, aflood caused a spillage of 80 ton of liquefied chlorineand 10 tons of chlorine gas (Cruz et al., 2004).

Katrina hurricane in 2005 caused one of the largestinland oil spills in the U.S. history which affected theChalmette community. Approximately 1,050,000gallons of oil was released due to damages throughoutthe Murphy Oil Refinery. A total of over eight milliongallons of oil was released throughout thegeographical area impacted by Hurricane Katrina(Picou, 2009). A total of 2000/3000 of oil and gasoffshore and onshore platforms were affected with ahundred of them were completely destroyed.Hundreds of miles of oil and gas pipelines were

displaced or broken (inland and offshore) (Cruz andKrausmann, 2009).

One of the most recent massive NaTech accidentsoccurred on 11 March 2011 in Japan which wasattributed to the tremendous 9.0 magnitudeearthquake, resulting to tsunami with a wave height ofmore than 30 m. It is recorded as the most destructivedisaster with a total economic damage exceedingUS$210 billion. It triggered a number of NaTechaccidents including damages of the Fukushima andOnagawa nuclear power plants, fires and explosions

of a refinery in Chiba and a petrochemical plant inSendai (Petrova and Krausmann, 2011).


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3 EXISTING METHODS FOR NATECH RISKASSESSMENT, MANAGEMENT ANDPREVENTION

Extensive searching on the literature shows increasingefforts especially by the academia towards the

development of methods and frameworks forassessing and managing the risk of NaTech events aswell as preventing or mitigating the consequencesposed by such events. This section discusses some ofthese available methods.

3.1 Assessment Methods

Several important efforts have been done in recentyears dedicated to developing screening tools forassessing NaTech hazard and risk (Busini et al.,2011). One of them includes the inclusion of NaTechscenarios in the framework of Quantitative Risk

Assessment (QRA) (Vetere et al., 2004). In order toallow the QRA of NaTech events, the equipmentvulnerability models should be defined. This isnecessary to estimate the equipment damageprobability on the basis of severity or intensityparameters of the natural disaster event.

Among the notable works associated with this waspresented by Cruz and Okada (2008). They proposedRabid Natech Risk Assessment (RNRA) as a methodfor preliminary assessment of NaTech risk in urbanareas. This method is applicable to any type of natural

disaster (e.g. earthquake and flood). It isstraightforward to be used by either experts or non-experts as well as to quickly identify areas with highNaTech risk. The methodology takes into accountpossible interactions between the various systems inthe urban environment; the physical infrastructure(e.g. chemical plants), the community (e.g. populationexposed), the natural environment (e.g. river basins),and the risk and emergency management systems (e.g.structural and non-structural measures). The RNRAcomprises various steps; data collection and inventorydevelopment, hazard identification and vulnerabilityanalysis, and estimation of a NaTech risk index(NRIi) for each Hazmat-containing storage tank. Thecalculated NRIi value is then used to identify areaswith high NaTech risk (Cruz and Okada 2008).

Antonioni et al., (2009) developed a systematicframework for quantitative assessment of the NaTechrisk. Different damage modes of process equipmentand accidental scenarios that may be possiblytriggered from the disaster can be identified using thisframework. This framework is applicable to bothearthquake and floods scenarios (Antonioni et al.2009). Also a lot of concerns have been directed tothe development of equipment vulnerability models toestimate equipment damage probability associated

with earthquake scenarios, but not much have beendone for flood scenarios (Cozzani et al., 2013).Landucci et al. (2012) proposed a mechanical damagemodel for assessing the vulnerability of atmosphericvertical vessels to floods. The model correlates thepossibility of damage to 1) the maximum height offloodwater (hw) and 2) the maximum water velocity(vw) (Landucci et al., 2012).

A very recent development is by Girgin andKrausmann (2013) which introduced a method thatincludes the estimation of on-site natural hazardparameters, determination of damage probabilities ofplant units, and assessment of probability and severityof possibly triggered NaTech events. Themethodology is called RAPID-N, by which rapid localand regional NaTech risk assessments and mappingcan be conducted with minimal data input. RAPID-Nfacilitates on-line NaTech risk assessment byfeaturing a user-friendly interface with advanced dataentry, visualization, and analysis tools. This methoddoes not require any commercial software libraries.Moreover, the method has the merit of preservingconfidentialities by supporting data protection andaccess restriction for critical information i.e. plant unitdata and the associated risk assessments. The RAPID-N is applicable to different natural hazards and typesof plant unit (Girgin and Krausmann 2013).

3.2 NaTech Risk ManagementTo date, there is no specific regulation that takesNaTech risk into consideration. Natural andtechnological disasters have always been managed asseparate events. The rise of NaTech events in the lasttwo decades makes it necessary for industries toestablish a risk management programs that bringnatural disasters into consideration. One possibilitythat worth to be looked at is modification of thecurrent legislations such as SEVESO Directive andOSHA to take NaTech into consideration. AlsoNaTech management should be integrated into the

already existing technological risk managementframeworks, legislations and policies (Cruz et al.,2004). Assessment methodologies and tools would beof great importance for NaTech risk management.

3.3 Prevention Methods

The strategy for prevention and mitigation of NaTechrisk is based on the common principles used formanaging safety. Land-use planning as well asenvironmental and safety permit granting forestablishments of new facilities are two important

strategies for preventing and mitigating NaTechaccidents. Also risk mapping is an excellent tool forrisk management as well as in land-use planning


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besides to increase awareness and preparedness forNaTech incidents (Vetere et al., 2004).

3.3.1 Land-use Planning

One of the basic strategies for preventing andmitigating risk of NaTechs is the issue of location.The municipalities should be responsible for land-useplanning. Their responsibilities include knowing aboutthe natural conditions (e.g. areas with poor ground-stability, dams and calculated flood areas) in themunicipality and responsibility for the location of newbuildings. The construction of vulnerable buildingsand technical installations should be avoided in areasthat suffer from natural hazards. However, in normalcases, a large proportion of buildings are alreadybeing constructed before careful consideration isgiven to natural risks in the area (Vetere et al., 2004).

3.3.2 Environmental and Safety Assessments forEstablishments of New Facilities

Environmental and safety assessments for newtechnological establishments , including NaTechsafety, is to a great extent a responsibility of thecompany itself as well as the permit-grantingauthorities. For example, the permission for hazardousinstallations (including Seveso II) and establishmentsof new technological facilities that can affect theenvironment must be granted prior to performing anywork based on environmental and safety assessments.

In these assessments the location and land-use aroundthe site are one of the important issues. It is alsoimportant that ground stability (landslide risk) andflood risk are taken into consideration during thisprocess (Vetere et al., 2004).

3.3.3 Risk Mapping

In managing NaTech based risks, it is important tomap ground stability in built-up areas. The mapshould be used as a support for the countyadministrative boards and the municipalities toindicate the areas with potential risk of landslide.Such mapping will highlight those areas that requiremore detailed ground stability investigations (Vetereet al., 2004).

4 NATECH CONSIDERATION INPETRO(CHEMICAL) PLANT DESIGN

Natech risk should be taken into considerations atearly stages of chemical and petrochemical plantdevelopment and design. Plants with hazardousmaterials should be equipped with equipment thatmonitor and control whenever deviations occur. It is

evident that NaTech consideration in petro(chemical)plant design plays an important role in riskprevention. This was witnessed during the Northridge

earthquake when the industrial facilities experiencedsevere damages. Also losses of fire protection waterfrom the onsite storage tanks occurred due to waterpipes failure. Despite that, the inclusion of seismic gasshutoff valves in the plant design played an effectiverole in preventing fire and explosion from occurring(Michael et al., 1997).

The adoption of appropriate seismic building codesfor new plant structures and retrofitting of older plantstructures to current engineering building codes canhelp minimize loss of lives and properties. Forexample, California has adopted the Unified BuildingCode (UBC) (1997), which requires design ofbuildings for a 1 in 475-year earthquake. The designof plant utilities, pipeline systems, and processingunits should be based on the recommended design andsafety standards set by engineering and professionalassociations such as the American Society of CivilEngineers (ASCE), the American Society ofMechanical Engineers (ASME), or the AmericanPetroleum Institute (API) (Cruz and Okada 2008).

In Japan, industrial facilities are constructed based onthe Building Standard (BS) Law (revised in 1981) alsoknown as New Seismic Design Method. It isevident that engineered buildings constructed underthe revised BS Law are designed for greater strengthand stiffness than similar buildings in the U.S. andtend to be more redundant as well as providingadequate protection against earthquakes (Cruz andOkada 2008).

5 CONCLUSION

Chemical and petrochemical are highly vulnerable tonatural disasters. Natural disasters could triggeranother tragic event when striking an inherentlyhazardous establishments (e.g. chemical andpetrochemical plants) causing what is called NaTechevents. NaTech accident can be a direct or an indirectcause to severe damage to industrial facilities leading

to loss of containment, Hazmat releases, oil spills,fires and explosions, fatalities, injuries, and economiclosses. In the last two decades, NaTechs recorded arise causing a growing attention among the industries,academia as well as authorities. Several riskassessment methods have been developed to assessthe NaTech-prone areas and NaTech risks, as well asthe vulnerability of industrial equipment. The goal ofdeveloping the tools and conducting the assessment isthe prevention of NaTechs and mitigation of theirimpacts.

A significant number of NaTech accidents haveoccurred in the last two decades causing severedamages to petro(chemical) industries around the


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world. These NaTechs are attributed to naturaldisasters which are either geological-based (i.e.earthquakes) or meteorological-based (i.e. floods,hurricanes and lightning). Unfortunately there is nospecific management program/law that takes NaTechrisk into account. Individual actions have been takenby many countries that are vulnerable to Natechevents in order to assess, prevent or mitigate andreduce the risk of NaTechs. Natural and technologicaldisasters have been managed as separate events. Thegrowing number of NaTech events in the last twentyyears necessitates the establishment of riskmanagement plans as well as modifications to thecurrent legislations to take such events intoconsideration. Also the integration between NaTechmanagement and the already existing technologicalrisk management frameworks, legislations and

policies should be done.

Land-use planning, environmental and safetyassessment-based permit for new technologicalestablishments as well as risk mapping are vitalapproaches for the management, prevention andmitigation of NaTechs risk. Risk mapping also helpsin land-use planning and in increasing awareness andpreparedness for NaTech incidents. NaTechconsideration in petro(chemical) plant design plays amajor role in minimizing the loss of lives andproperties.

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