A Quantitative Framework for Propagation Paths of Natech Domino Effects in Chemical Industrial Parks: Part I—Failure Analysis

Abstract

Along with global climate change and industrialization, domino effects caused by Natech events occurred frequently in chemical industrial parks over the past decades. Previous research has not yet proposed a reliable method to obtain all possible paths of Natech domino effects, and moreover, a risk assessment and mitigation system has not been established. The present work aims to develop a quantitative framework for propagation paths of Natech domino effects, which can effectively safeguard the sustainable development of chemical industrial parks. The presentation of this work is divided into two parts: Part I (current paper) proposes a path probability calculation method that can simultaneously consider multiple primary accident scenarios and multi-level domino effects triggered by natural disasters. The proposed method transforms the propagation paths of domino effects into the paths of directed graph by constructing the equipment failure state transition matrix and the equipment failure state transition probability matrix. The depth-first traversal algorithm is used to obtain all possible propagation paths and their propagation probabilities, providing data support for the quantitative risk assessment and prevention and control measures presented in the accompanying paper (Part II). The case study shows that the probability of equipment failure caused by multi-level domino effects triggered by Natech accidents is higher than that of conventional accidents. However, the present work only considers the spatial propagation of domino effects, while their spatio-temporal propagation remains as a further direction for this area of inquiry.