Fuzzy Ranking Methodology for Risk Assessment of Potential Pollution Accidents in Chemical Plants

The risk level of potential environmental pollution accidents in a chemical plant is determined by a number of criteria, and the risk assessment and ranking of potential accidents among a limited number of chemical plants is a multi-criteria process in which the fuzziness and relativity should be considered. So the paper proposed a fuzzy ranking methodology for risk assessment, which does not calculate the definite risk index for each plant being assessed as the Comprehensive Index Method, but attempts to get their relative membership grades belonging to the fuzzy set on "risking" instead, and the results are more reliable. Furthermore, the methodology is applied to the risk assessment of potential accidents among four important local chemical plants as a case study, and the results are more reasonable than those assessed by means of the regular Comprehensive Index Method.