Quantitative assessment of wildfire risk in oil facilities

Abstract

Despite frequent occurrence of wildfires around the world, the role of wildfires has rarely been taken into account in risk assessment of process plants in wildlands, especially that large inventory of flammable petroleum products in contact with the heat of wildfire can lead to severe domino effects. We have developed a dynamic risk assessment framework by integrating available models of fire spread and domino effect analysis with online maps of wildfire characteristics such as ignition probability and heat intensity to investigate the impact of wildfires on oil facilities. The framework is modular, so one can readily enhance its accuracy by replacing the current techniques with more sophisticated ones. The application of the methodology is demonstrated on an oil terminal.

Keywords: Cost-benefit analysis; Domino effect; Dynamic Bayesian network; Natech risk assessment; Oil terminal; Wildfire.