Historical analysis of accidents in seaports

A study has been carried out of accidents occurring in seaports. A total of 471 accidents occurring between the beginning of the twentieth century and October 2002 have been analysed. The results obtained show a significant increase in the frequency of accidents over time: 83% of the accidents occurred in the last 20 years and 59% in the past decade. The most frequent accidents were releases (51%), followed by fires (29%), explosions (17%) and gas clouds (3%). More than half the accidents occurred during transport: loading/unloading operations, storage and process plants also make a large contribution to the total. The various causes of the accidents have also been analysed, as have the type of substance involved and the consequences for the population (number of people killed, injured and evacuated). Finally, some conclusions are drawn concerning the need to improve certain safety measures in ports.     

Emergency response plan for boiler explosion with toxic chemical releases at Nan-Kung industrial park in central Taiwan

A large amount of hazardous materials and equipment has been extensively employed to produce useful chemicals for our daily lives, but many serious accidents, such as fires, explosions, toxic releases, and so on, that harm human beings and impact the environment have occurred during preparation, operation, and transportation of these chemicals. On 17 May 2007, a toxic release from a boiler explosion in a chemical firm triggered a large amount of xylene (7 ton), isopropanol (8 ton), phosphorus trichloride (44.7 ton), and dimethyl formamide (DMF) (1.37 ton) to be released to the atmosphere with total damages of 2000 m² level ground. Through concerted efforts from the Yunlin Emergency Response Information Center (YERIC), sponsored by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) of Taiwan and other government sectors, this accident was eventually well controlled after 37 h with 107 people being involved in the rescue action. This study could be applied to lessen the degree of hazard for relevant accidents with an emergency response plan (ERP), and, via Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and photo ionization detector (PID) the toxic concentrations of airborne chemicals that occurred in the industrial area could be analyzed.     

Cushioning the impact of toxic release from runaway industrial accidents with greenbelts

The three aspects of accidents in chemical process industries which cause most serious damage—explosions, fires, and toxic releases—can all be controlled to some extent if greenbelts are present around the affected industry. We have recently developed and validated a system of methodologies for greenbelt design. In this paper we present the application of these models in designing greenbelts and forecasting their role in cushioning the impact of accidental release of toxic gases. With properly located and designed greenbelts as much as 33% of the accidental release of SO₂, 43% of H₂S, and 51% of NH₃ under stable atmospheric conditions (in which the dispersion is very slow and the release thus has maximum toxic impact) can be absorbed.     

TORAP—a new tool for conducting rapid risk assessment in petroleum refineries and petrochemical industries

The use of a new computer-automated tool TORAP (TOol for Rapid risk Assessment in Petroleum refinery and petrochemical industries) is demonstrated through a rapid and quantitative risk assessment of a typical petroleum refinery. The package has been applied for an appraisal of the risks of accidents (fires, explosions, toxic release) posed by different units of the refinery, and to identify steps to prevent/manage accidents. The studies reveal that TORAP enables a user to quickly focus on the accidents likely to occur, and enables forecasting the nature and impacts of such accidents. This information is directly utilisable in identifying “soft” spots and in taking appropriate remedial measures to prevent or control accidents. The special attributes of TORAP are: (a) a wide range of applications—achieved by incorporating models capable of handling all types of industrial fires and explosions, (b) sophistication—brought about by including state-of-the-art models developed by these authors and others, (c) user-friendliness—achieved by incorporating on-line help, graphics, carefully formatted output, and, above all, an automatic module with which even a lay user can conduct risk assessment. The entire package, especially its automatic module, is supported by an extensive knowledge-base built into the software.     

Loss prevention in the petrochemical and chemical-process high-tech industries in Taiwan

Industrial safety has noticeably improved in recent years in Taiwan. Despite these improvements, however, serious accidents including explosions, chemical releases, and fires have still occurred in companies such as the Fu Guo Chemical Company (2001), Sin Hun Chemical Company (2005), Motech Industries, Inc. (2005) and Nanpao Resin Co. (2010). These accidents resulted in great loss of life and property, and further caused demands for improvement. Chemical disasters usually result from the combination of several mistakes or gross carelessness and are seldom caused by a single episode. To ensure the safety of operating, handling and storing chemicals, as well as to prevent chemical disasters, one must take many critical points into account, such as techniques, manufacturing processes, operators, chemicals, and emergency response. In Taiwan, the hazards and risks of high-tech companies are higher than in other industrial sectors. Therefore, a variety of safety management methods and regulations appropriate for high-tech companies have been generated. We studied the current status of the indigenous loss prevention protocols based on the safety management of petrochemical and chemical-process high-tech industries in Taiwan.     

液化石油气事故机理及模拟评价方法

液化石油气的生产、储运过程中蒸气爆炸事故屡有发生,并导致其他类型的爆炸.结合液化石油气的典型案例,对液化石油气火灾爆炸事故发生的过程、机理和评价模型进行了研究与分析.     

Fires,explosions and related incidents at work in Great Britain in 1998/1999 and 1999/2000

A review of incidents in Great Britain reported to the Health and Safety Executive during 1998/1999 and 1999/2000 involving fires, explosions, runaway chemical reactions and unignited releases of flammable materials. Statistical comparisons are made against previous years based on the materials involved, and a number of common themes and causes are identified.     

Fires, explosions and related incidents at work in Great Britain in 1996/97 and 1997/98

Incidents in Great Britain reported to the Health and Safety Executive during 1996/97 and 1997/98 involving fires, explosions, runaway chemical reactions and unignited releases of flammable materials are reviewed. Statistical comparisons are made against previous years based on the materials involved, and a number of common themes and causes are identified.     

危险货物道路运输事故统计分析

为掌握危险货物道路运输事故的发生规律,预防事故与灾害发生,笔者收集、整理了2000年9月至2007年3月间的609起危险货物道路运输事故案例,并对案例进行详细分解和统计分析,获得了危险货物道路运输事故的时间分布、地域分布、路段分布、事故形态分布、事故原因分布等统计特征。研究结果表明,危险货物道路运输事故具有如下规律:早晨和上午(4时至12时)是事故多发时段;事故形态以单车事故为主,特别是车辆倾斜或侧翻事故为数最多;驾驶员处置不当和违法驾驶行为以及运输车辆机件失效是导致事故的最主要的两类原因。针对案例分析结果,提出预防危险货物道路运输事故、保障危险货物道路运输安全的对策与建议。     

Analysis of factors that influence hazardous material transportation accidents based on Bayesian networks: A case study in China

In this study, we applied Bayesian networks to prioritize the factors that influence hazardous material (Hazmat) transportation accidents. The Bayesian network structure was built based on expert knowledge using Dempster-Shafer evidence theory, and the structure was modified based on a test for conditional independence. We collected and analyzed 94 cases of Chinese Hazmat transportation accidents to compute the posterior probability of each factor using the expectation-maximization learning algorithm. We found that the three most influential factors in Hazmat transportation accidents were human factors, the transport vehicle and facilities, and packing and loading of the Hazmat. These findings provide an empirically supported theoretical basis for Hazmat transportation corporations to take corrective and preventative measures to reduce the risk of accidents.     

危险化学品运输事故初探

危险化学品运输是一种动态危险源,在运输过程中火灾、爆炸、泄漏、中毒事故时有发生,对人类生命、物质财产和生态环境的安全构成极大威胁.对危险化学品在运输过程中事故发生的类型、事故的成因、事故的危害进行了探讨,阐述了事故的预防措施以及事故后如何做好减灾工作.     

Method for quantitative assessment of the domino effect in industrial sites

Accidents caused by the domino effect are the most destructive accidents related to industrial sites. The most typical primary incidents for a domino effect sequence are explosions (57%), followed by fires (43%) (Abdolhamidzadeh et al., 2010). These former can generate three escalation vectors (heat load, overpressure, and fragments), and may affect the surrounding equipments and/or facilities. If the affected targets are damaged, they may also explode and generate other threats to other surrounding facilities and so on. These chains of accidents may lead to catastrophic consequences and may affect not only the industrial sites, but also people, environment and economy. This paper presents a methodology for quantitative assessment of domino effects caused by fire and explosion on storage areas. The individual and societal risks are also estimated.     

A new approach for facility siting using mapping risks on a plant grid area and optimization

The present work is focused on developing a methodology to find the optimal placement of a hazardous process unit and other facilities using optimization theory while considering a risk map in the plant area. Incidents can have possible consequences resulting from flammable gas releases, which can be evaluated by using consequence modeling programs. The probability of each incident can be derived from initial leak hole size estimation through event tree analysis. In this methodology the plant area was divided into square grids and risk scores were estimated for each grid. The overall cost is a function of the probable cost of property damage due to fires or explosions and the interconnection cost including piping, cable, and management. The proposed approach uses a mixed integer linear optimization programming (MILP) that identifies attractive locations by minimizing the overall cost. A case study is presented for a hexane–heptane separation facility that considers the meteorological data for the given area in order to show the applicability of the proposed methodology. Results from this study will be useful in assisting the selection of locations for facilities and for risk management.     

Numerical simulation of far-field blast loads arising from large TNT equivalent explosives

Large TNT equivalent explosions usually arise from accidents occurring during the transportation, storage, and manufacturing of chemicals relevant to process industries. The blast wave generated by the explosion will spread and interact with the surrounding factories and storehouses, damaging the building structures within several kilometers and causing significant casualties and property losses. This study aims to develop an efficient numerical simulation method to predict blast loads to estimate the consequences of accidents involving far-field free air bursts or surface burst explosions. Before its interaction with the interested target, a blast wave is generated in the numerical model by specifying the initial and boundary conditions of the disturbed air. Based on empirical data of incident overpressure, an explicit formula to calculate the air particle velocity is derived from the governing equations of a perfect inviscid gas. A simplified path line method is proposed to calculate the air density. The proposed method is applied to the LS-DYNA CESE solver to simulate the blast loads on building structures in the far field. Validations against empirical data and experiments indicate that the proposed method is sufficiently accurate for engineering applications and, through a case study, presents a more efficient performance than the LOAD_BLAST_ENHANCED (LBE) and mapping methods.     

Trends analysis of fire accidents in the history of China: B.C.221–A.D.1949

In this paper, fire accidents happening from B.C.221 to A.D.1949 in China are analyzed and the changing regularity of high fire occurrence regions (HFOR) is discussed. We have reached some useful conclusions: (1) the changes of HFOR in China follow those of the economic and cultural centers. The more advanced the economy in the province, the more the fire accidents. (2) war is the primary cause for fires in the Chinese history.     

Leading and lagging: Process safety climate–incident relationships at one year

In order to evaluate the leading and lagging effects of process safety climate on incidents, we correlated safety climate survey data with organizational safety records from before and after the survey time period. We obtained data from a large, multinational organization with manufacturing operations involving a number of complex processes, chemicals, and hazardous substances. A total of 7728 employees from 62 sites responded to a safety climate survey in 2007. Individual responses were aggregated to the site-level and matched to site-level organizational records of process safety incidents 1 year before and 1 year after survey administration. Employees’ perceptions of good routine housekeeping were significantly related to environmental impact incidents as both a leading and a lagging indicator, as well as fires/explosions and property damage outcomes. Employees’ perceptions of systems to prevent backlogs and the extent to which health and safety problems are promptly corrected were also related to environmental releases and fires/explosions. Implications for process safety climate research, organizational survey strategies, and organizational climate change are discussed.     

Research on the prediction of dangerous goods accidents during highway transportation based on the ARMA model

The COVID-19 epidemic has caused a lack of data on highway transportation accidents involving dangerous goods in China in the first quarter of 2020, and this lack of data has seriously affected research on highway transportation accidents involving dangerous goods. This study strives to compensate for this lack to a certain extent and reduce the impact of missing data on research of dangerous goods transportation accidents. Data pertaining to 2340 dangerous goods accidents in the process of highway transportation in China from 2013 to 2019 are obtained with webpage crawling software. In this paper, the number of monthly highway transportation accidents involving dangerous goods from 2013 to 2019 is determined, and the time series of transportation accidents and an autoregressive moving average (ARMA) prediction model are established. The prediction accuracy of the model is evaluated based on the actual number of dangerous goods highway transportation accidents in China from 2017 to 2019. The results indicate that the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) between the actual and predicted values of dangerous goods highway transportation accidents from 2017 to 2019 is 0.147, 0.315 and 0.29. Therefore, the model meets the prediction accuracy requirements. Then, the prediction model is applied to predict the number of dangerous goods transportation accidents in the first quarter of 2020 in China. Twenty-two accidents are predicted in January, 23 accidents in February and 27 accidents in March. The results provide a reference for the study of dangerous goods transportation accidents and the formulation of accident prevention and emergency measures.     

Severity of accidents with hazardous materials A comparison between transportation and fixed installations

A review of accident case histories relevant to hazardous materials has been performed. From the literature, 1793 accident case histories involving hazardous materials were identified, most of them from the period 1960–1988. Of these 1793 accidents, 39% happened during transportation. In 682 accidents the consequences included fatalities, and of these 27% involved the transportation of hazardous materials. The accumulated frequency-fatality curves (so-called fN curves) have been constructed and are close to straight lines with a slope of –1, indicating that the probability of having an accident with, for instance, more than one hundred fatalities is approximately ten times lower than the probability of having an accident with more than ten fatalities. The accidents were grouped according to transportation type, and the difference between the various groups was tested using a standard χ² approach. No significant difference between fixed installations and transportation was found for accidents having consequences above three fatalities. Differences were found between Western Europe and North America and the rest of the world. Once an accident has happened, it seems to have more severe effects outside Western Europe and North America, both for transportation accidents and fixed installations. Comparison of fN curves for Western Europe and North America from different time periods did not show significant differences, indicating that once an accident has happened, it has the same probability of escalating now, as it had 20 years ago.     

Fire and explosion risk assessment for large-scale oil export terminal

Now in Russian Federation and other countries large-scale oil terminals (volume of one tank exceeds 100 000 m³, total volume of tanks exceeds 300 000 m³) are designed and constructed. Therefore fire safety of such objects becomes a very important task, solution of which is hardly possible without detail fire risk assessment. This study is aimed to a solution of this problem. Potential, individual and social risks were calculated. The potential risk was defined as a frequency of occurrence of hazardous factors of fires and explosions in a given point of space (the so-called risk contours). The individual risk was defined as a frequency of injuring a given person by hazardous factors of fires and explosions. Time of presence of this person in hazardous zones (near the hazardous installation) is taken into account during calculations of the individual risk. Social risk was defined as a dependence of frequency of injuring a given number of people by hazardous factors of fires and explosions on this number. In practice the social risk is usually determined on injuring not less than 10 people.

The oil terminal under consideration includes the following main parts: crude oil storage consisting of three tanks of volume 100 000 m³ each, input crude oil pipeline of diameter 0.6 m, crude oil pumps, output crude oil pipeline of diameter 0.8 m, auxiliary buildings and facilities. The following main scenarios of tank fires have been considered: rim seal fire, pool fire on a surface of a floating roof, pool fire on a total cross-section surface of the tank, pool fire in a dyke, explosions in closed or semiclosed volumes. Fires and explosions in other parts of the terminal are also taken into account. Effects of escalation of accidents are considered.

Risk contours have been calculated both for the territory of the terminal and for the neighbouring space. The potential risk for the storage zone is near 10⁻⁴–10⁻⁵ year⁻¹, and at a distance 500 m from the terminal the potential risk values do not exceed 10⁻⁶ year⁻¹. The values of the individual risk for various categories of workers are in the range of 10⁻⁵–10⁻⁶ year⁻¹. Because of low number of the workers on the terminal and large distances to towns and villages the social risk value is negligible. These risk values are consistent with practice of the best oil companies, and fire hazard level of the terminal can be accepted as tolerable.