Building reliability of risk assessment of domino effects in chemical tank farm through an improved uncertainty analysis method

The severity and complexity of fire-induced domino effects have received widespread attention. The spatial and temporal evolution process modeling of domino accidents is still stuck in single crisp value, in which the uncertainty will affect the reliability of the results. In this paper, we propose a computational method for uncertainty propagation of the evolution process modeling of the domino effect called Uncertainty Propagation of Domino Evolution Model (UPDEM), aiming to increase the reliability of risk assessment results. The method is capable of obtaining ranges and corresponding probability envelopes for tiame to failure and escalation probabilities, and quantifying uncertainty for all computational models that require input parameters. The uncertainty is quantified based on the evidence theory and a parameter cropping method based on the stress-strength interference model is proposed to optimize the evidence theory. The proposed method is applied to a case study and compared with previous studies. The comparison confirms that the results are more reliable after considering uncertainty and can produce the worst possible scenario consequence. Conducting the sensitivity analysis to prioritize the treatment of parameters and identify effective measures in risk control. The methodology can provide an important reference for decision-makers to prevent and control domino effects.