A Quantitative Risk Assessment Approach for the Dynamic Environmental Impact of Fire

This paper proposes a quantitative risk assessment approach to assess the frequency of an accident and its measurable consequences (for human, property and environment). The illustration of the proposed methodology is made on a refinery gasoline storage system with a high potential of fire risk, where the major initiating event is the overfilling of the gasoline tank. The objective of the study is to estimate the frequency of the tank overfilling as well as those relating to the likely consequences regarding the response of the different safety barriers in order to be compared to a threshold value (tolerable frequency). The consequences are quantified by taking into account the toxicity of gases (atmospheric dispersion) and liquid (effect on the soil), the thermal radiation (heat) and the overpressure (explosion blast force). To improve the storage system safety and thus reduce the associated risk level, several measures have been proposed.