Vulnerability Assessment of Process Vessels in the Event of Hurricanes

Hurricanes are multi-hazard natural hazards that can cause severe damage to chemical and process plants via individual or combined impact of strong winds, torrential rainfall, floods, and hitting waves especially in coastal areas. To assess and manage the vulnerability of process plants, failure modes and respective failure probabilities both before and after implementing safety measures should be assessed. However, due to the uncertainties arising from interdependent failure modes and lack of accurate and sufficient historical data, most conventional quantitative risk assessment techniques deliver inaccurate results, which in turn lead to inaccurate risk assessment and thus ineffective or non-cost-effective risk management strategies. Bayesian network (BN) is a probabilistic technique for reasoning under uncertainty with a variety of applications is system safety, reliability engineering, and risk assessment. In this chapter, applications of BN to vulnerability assessment and management of process vessels in the event of hurricanes are demonstrated and discussed.