QUANTITATIVE RISK ASSESSMENT

Risk can be assessed qualitatively or quantitatively.

Qualitatively, risk is considered proportional to the expected
losses which can be caused by an event and to the probability
of this event. The harsher the loss and the more likely the
event, the greater the overall risk
 Definition

Risk = Severity x Likelihood

Extent of Damage Likelihood of event
Fatality Based of failure frequency
Injuries of process components
Losses

Analysis based on design Analysis based on

and modeling equations manufacturers and historical
data
Understanding of risk
What can go wrong?
What are the consequences?
How likely is it to happen?
 Quantitative
Risk Assessment
What is QRA ?
Systematic methodology to assess risks associated any installation
Taking into consideration all forms of hazards
Uses design information and historical data to estimate frequency of
failure
Uses modelling software to assess consequence
Where/when is QRA needed
CIMAH 1989 part of CIMAH safety report
EQA 1985 a section under EIA
Methodology
Hazard Identification
Purpose: to identify plausible hazard conditions
Hazard can be from human, situational,
chemical, physical, mechanical, external threats
Methods
Check-list, Preliminary Hazard Review, HAZOP
etc.
 Frequency Analysis
Sometimes referred to as Hazard Analysis
Purpose: To estimate the likelihood for a hazard
scenario to occur
Methods
Event-Tree Analysis
Fault-Tree Analysis
 Consequence Analysis
Purpose: To assess the extent of damage
Typical Hazard
Toxic Release, Fire and Explosion
Modeling of hazard scenario
Toxic Release: Dispersion Model
Fire and explosion: TNT equivalent
Fatality Assessment: Probit Analysis
Nonfatal Consequence: Skin-burn, Property damage
TOXIC RELEASE: DISPERSION MODELS
Dispersion models describe the airborne transport of toxic
materials away from the accident site and into the plant and
community.
After a release, the airborne toxic is carried away by the
wind in a characteristic plume or a puff
The maximum concentration of toxic material occurs at the
release point (which may not be at ground level).
Concentrations downwind are less, due to turbulent mixing
and dispersion of the toxic substance with air.
Plume
 Factors Influencing Dispersion
Wind speed
Atmospheric stability
Ground conditions, buildings, water, trees
Height of the release above ground level
Momentum and buoyancy of the initial material released
Wind speed
As the wind speed increases, the plume becomes
longer and narrower; the substance is carried
downwind faster but is diluted faster by a larger
quantity of air.
Atmospheric stability

Atmospheric stability relates to vertical mixing of the air.

During the day the air temperature decreases rapidly with height,
encouraging vertical motions.
At night the temperature decrease is less, resulting in less vertical
motion.
Sometimes an inversion will occur. During and inversion, the
temperature increases with height, resulting in minimal vertical
motion. This most often occurs at night as the ground cools
rapidly due to thermal radiation.
Day & Night Condition

Air temperature as a function of altitude for day and night conditions. The
temperature gradient affects the vertical air motion.
Ground conditions
Ground conditions affect the mechanical mixing at the
surface and the wind profile with height. Trees and buildings
increase mixing while lakes and open areas decrease it.

Effect of ground conditions on vertical wind gradient.

Height of the release above ground level
The release height significantly affects ground level
concentrations.
As the release height increases, ground level
concentrations are reduced since the plume must disperse
a greater distance vertically.
Momentum and buoyancy of the initial material
released
The buoyancy and momentum of the material released
changes the effective height of the release.

The initial acceleration and buoyancy of the released material affects the plume character.
The dispersion models discussed in this chapter represent only ambient turbulence.
EXPLOSION: TNT EQUIVALENT
TNT equivalency is a simple method for equating a known
energy of a combustible fuel to an equivalent mass of TNT.
The approach is based on the assumption that an exploding
fuel mass behaves like exploding TNT on an equivalent
energy basis.
The equivalent mass of TNT
mHC
mTNT
ETNT
mTNT is the equivalent mass of TNT (mass)
is the empirical explosion efficiency(unitless)
m is the mass of hydrocarbon
ETNT is the energy of explosion of TNT
Hc is the energy of explosion of the flammable gas (energy/mass)

A typical value for energy of explosion of TNT is 1120

calories/gram = 4686 kJ/kg = 2016 Btu/lb. The heat of combustion
for the flammable gas can be used in place of the energy of
explosion for the combustible gas.
TNT Equivalent
The procedure to estimate the damage associated with an
explosion using the TNT equivalent method is as follows :
Determine the total amount of flammable material involved in the
explosion.

Estimate the explosion efficiency and calculate the equivalent mass

of TNT.

Use the scaling law to estimate the peak side on overpressure on

page 284.

Estimate the damage for common structures and process equipment

using table 6-9.
 Risk Estimation and Evaluation
Purpose: To assess Risk and Make Safety
Judgment
Methods
Individual Risk
Societal Risk
Tolerability Criteria
 Two distinct categories of Risks
Voluntary Risks

e.g.: driving or riding in an automobile, and working in an

industrial facility.
Involuntary Risks

e.g.: exposure to lighting, disease, typhoons and persons

in residential or recreational areas near the industrial
facilities.
Examples of risks associated with activities
Voluntary Involuntary
Risk fatalities Risk fatalities
(death) per (death) per
Activity person per yr Activity person per yr
(x106) (x106)
Smoking (20 5000 Influenza 200
cigarettes/day) Leukemia 80
Motor cycling 2000 Run over by road 60
Car racing 1200 vehicle (UK)
Car driving 170 Run over by road 50
Rock climbing 40 vehicle (USA)
Football 20 Floods (USA) 2.2
Storms (USA) 0.8
Lightning (USA) 0.1
Falling aircraft 0.1
(USA)
Falling aircraft 0.02
(UK)
HIRARC
HIRARC
HIRARC
HIRARC

Process Safety - CPE615

Individual Risk
Individual risk is defined formally (by Institution of
Chemical Engineering, UK) as the frequency at which an
individual may be expected to sustain a given level of
harm from the realization of specified hazards. It is
usually taken to be the risk of death, and usually
expressed as a risk per year.
The term individual may be a member of a certain
group of workers on a facility, or a member of the
public, or anything as defined by the QRA.
Location Specific Individual Risk (LSIR)
IRx ,y ,i pi fi
IRx,y,i is the individual risk at location (x,y) due to event i,
pi is the probability of fatality due to incident i at location
(x,y). This is normally determined by FTA
fi is the frequency of incident outcome case i, (per year).
This value can be determined using Probit Analysis

When there are more than one release events, the

cumulative risk at location (x,y) is given by equation
n
IRx ,y IRx ,y ,i
i 1
Average Individual Risk /
Individual Risk Per Annum
The average individual risk is the average of all individual risk estimates
over a defined or exposed population. This is useful for example in
estimating the average risk of workers in reference with existing
population. Average individual risk over exposed population is given
by CCPS (1989) as

IR
x ,y
P
x ,y x ,y

IRAV
P
x ,y
x ,y

Here, IRAV is the average individual risk in the exposed population

(probability of fatality per year) and P x, y is the number of people at
location x, y
Societal Risk

Societal risk measures the risk to a group of people. It is an

estimation of risk in term of both the potential size and
likelihood of incidents with multiple consequences.
The risk can be represented by Frequency-Number (F-N)
Curve.
Determination of Societal Risk
To calculate the number of fatalities resulting from each
incident outcome case, the following equation is used:

Ni Px ,y pf ,i
x ,y

Here, Ni is number of fatalities resulting from Incident

Outcome case i, pf,i is the probability of fatality and Px,y is the
number of population.
The cumulative frequency is then calculated using the
following equation:
FN Fi
i
Here, FN is the frequency of all incident outcome cases affecting N or more
people, per year and Fi= is the frequency of incident outcome case i per
year.
Example: The corresponding Societal Risk
1x10-3
Frequency (F) on or more Fatalities (per year)

Intolerable
1x10-4 Region

1x10-5
ALARP
Region
1x10-6
Broadly Acceptable
Region
1x10-7
1 10 100 1000 10000
Fatalities (N)
 Tolerable Risk
Risk cannot be eliminated entirely.
Every chemical process has a certain amount of risk
associated with it.
At some point in the design stage someone needs to
decide if the risks are tolerable".
Each country has it owns tolerability criteria.
One tolerability criteria in the UK is "as low as reasonable
practicable" (ALARP) concept formalized in 1974 by
United Kingdom Health and Safety at Work Act.
ALARP Criteria
INTOLERABLE LEVEL
(Risk cannot be justified
on any ground)

TOLERABLE only if risk reduction

is impracticable or if its cost is
grossly disproportionate to the
THE ALARP REGION improvement gained
(Risk is undertaken if benefited
is desired)
TOLERABLE if cost of reduction
would exceed the improvement
gained

BROADLY
ACCEPTABLE
REGION

Page 38
Tolerability Criteria in Malaysia
LSIR is used as a measure of individual risk
This means that the risk is not influenced by population

The Upper limits for LSIR are as follows

For residential receptors : 1 X 10-6 fatality per year

For industrial receptors : 1 X 10-5 fatality per year

For workers on site: Voluntary risk (1 X 10-3 fatality per year). This
is considered maximum in UK for offshore industry.
Example: LSIR for Ship Explosion at a
Proposed Port

1 x 10-5

1 x 10-6
 Risk Management
Purpose: to propose mitigating measure to reduce the
potential impact of the hazard and possibly reduce the
risk level
Method
Safe Work Procedure at every project stages
Emergency Response Management
Emergency Response Procedure
 Release Mitigation
The purpose of the consequence modelling is to provide
a tool for performing release mitigation.
Release mitigation is defined as lessening the risk of a
release incident by acting on the source (at the point of
release) either
in a preventive way by reducing the likelihood of an event which
could generate a hazardous vapour cloud; or
in a protective way by reducing the magnitude of the release
and/or the exposure of local persons or property.

42
Release Mitigation
Preventing release is the best way to prevent
accidents
Release mitigation involves
1. Detecting the release as quickly as possible;
2. Stopping the release as quickly as possible; and
3. Invoking a mitigation procedure to reduce the impact of the release on
the surroundings.
Reduce amount of vapour formed/release
Once a release is in vapour form, the resulting cloud is nearly impossible
to control.
Table 1 provides additional methods and detail on
release mitigation techniques.
43
Toxic Release
Model Release
Design Basis Mitigation
Procedure
Source Model

Dispersion Model

Prediction of
Release Impact

Is
Hazard No
Revise
Acceptable ? -Process or plant
-Process operation
-Emergency response
yes
Operate plant 44
Table 1: Release mitigation approaches
Major Area Examples
Water sprays.
Water curtains.
Steam curtains.
Counter-
Air curtains.
measures
Deliberate ignition of explosive cloud.
Dilution.
Foams.
On-site communications.
Emergency shutdown equipment and
procedures.
Emergency Site evacuation.
Response Personal protective equipment.
Medical treatment.
On-site emergency plans, procedures, training
and drills.

45
 Table 1 Release mitigation approaches

Major Area Examples

Inventory reduction : Less chemicals
inventoried or less in process vessels.
Chemical substitution : Substitute a less
Inherent Safety
hazardous chemical for one more hazardous.
Process attenuation : Use lower temperatures
and pressures.
Plant physical integrity : Use better seals or
materials of construction.
Process integrity : Ensure proper operating
Engineering conditions and material purity.
Design
Process design features for emergency control
: Emergency relief systems.
Spill containment : Dikes and spill vessels.

46
Table 1 Release mitigation approaches
Major Area Examples
Operating policies and procedures.
Training for vapor release prevention and
control.
Audits and inspections.
Equipment testing.
Management Maintenance program.
Management of modifications and changes
to prevent new hazards.
Security.

Early Vapor Detection by sensors.

Detection and Detection by personnel.
Warning

47
Tutorial
In group, please prepare the HIRARC form of your
company by choosing only ONE work activity.