Proceedings of the 1st AUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014

Natural Disasters Assessment and Management in Petrochemical Industries: A

Review

Mimi Haryani
Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia, email:
mimi@cheme.utm.my

Y. Alhamdani, M.N. Yacob

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia, mimi@cheme.utm.my

Abstract: Natural disasters can be a causative factor to secondary catastrophic events posing a multi-threat to the surrounding
environment. This scenario is experienced when a disaster (e.g. earthquake or flood) strikes inherently hazardous industrialized
areas causing natural hazard-triggered technological accidents (NaTech). Chemical and petrochemical industries are among
those that are highly vulnerable to natural disasters. NaTech events showed a rise in the last three decades necessitating much
of attention towards the development of systematic methods to assess, mitigate and prevent the NaTech-associated risks. This
review paper discusses several high profile NaTech events and summarizes some of the methods available for NaTech risk
assessment. Natech risk management and prevention strategies as well as consideration of NaTech in process design are also
discussed. Based on our extensive study, there is yet any specific risk management program or regulation that takes NaTech
risk into consideration. Way forward is to integrate between NaTech management with the already existing technological risk
management frameworks, legislations and policies. Land-use and risk mapping strategies would be excellent tools for
managing and preventing NaTech based risks. NaTech should be considered in petro(chemical) plant design besides the other
risk factors to minimize the loss of lives and properties upon the occurrence of unwanted disastrous event .

Keywords: Natural disasters; NaTech events; Assessment; Petrochemical industries; NaTech management.

1 INTRODUCTION Showalter and Myers (1994) conducted one of the

Natural disasters can be a causative factor to
secondary catastrophic events posing a multi-threat to
the surrounding environment. Natural hazard-
triggered technological accidents (also known as
NaTech) refer to the technological accidents caused
by natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes
and floods (Krausmann et al., 2010). It is broadly
known that chemical and petrochemical industries are
inherently hazardous to workers, surrounding
communities as well as the environment. Hence, such
industries are among those that are most vulnerable to
natural disasters. Chemical and petrochemical
accidents triggered by natural disasters could result in
severe damages including loss of containment of
hazardous materials (Hazmat), oil spills posing
environmental pollution, fires and explosions leading
to fatalities, injuries, and economic losses (Krausmann
et al., 2011). The number of NaTech events is actually
insignificant compared to the accidents attributed to
human factors and process failures. However,
NaTechs have shown a rise in the last three decades
(Cozzani et al., 2010).
Literature shows a growing concern towards chemical
and petrochemical accidents caused by natural
disasters either for offshore or onshore facilities.
first studies on NaTech events in the U.S. between
1980 and 1989 based on a survey of State Emergency
Management Agencies. The finding was majority of
NaTech accidents are attributed to earthquakes (228
reported incidents), followed by hurricanes (26),
floods (16), lightnings (15), winds (13) and storms (7)
(Cruz et al., 2004). Similar study was carried out by
Sengul (2005) also in the U.S. between 1990 and 2003
but relying on chemical accident releases reported to
U.S. Federal databases. The study reveals that
weather-related NaTechs represented more than 80%
of NaTech-related accidents (Cruz and Krausmann,
2009).
Studies have been done to correlate the damage
severity as a result of NaTech events with the age and
design of the plant as well as to identify the vulnerable
equipment to a certain type of NaTech (Renni et al.,
2010). A study by Krausmann et al. (2010) that
analysed the impact of the Wenchuan earthquake in
year 2008 on industrial facilities finds that the
collapse of concrete-structured warehouses, offices
and manufacturing buildings was the main cause of
fatalities, injuries and damage to the facilities. The
subsequent damages and failure modes, as well as the
Hazmat releases mechanism are similar to those

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Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014 Proceedings of the 1st AUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster
commonly caused by other earthquake-based NaTech
accidents (Krausmann et al., 2010).
The prevention of NaTechs and mitigation of their
impacts require systematic tools to assess the NaTech-
prone areas and NaTech risks, as well as the
vulnerability of industrial equipment. In this regard,
there are progressively increasing efforts related to the
development of risk assessment methods for NaTech
accidents. Some notable examples of the NaTechs risk
assessment methods as well as efforts for managing
and preventing the aftermaths following such
disastrous events in petro(chemical) related industries
are discussed in Section 3.
2 NATECH ACCIDENTS IN CHEMICAL AND
PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRIES
In the last two decades, chemical and petrochemical
industries have experienced a significant number of
NaTech accidents causing Hazmat releases, oil
spillages, severe damage to the industrial properties
and economical losses. Marsh and McLennan, 1997
pointed out that around 8% of the hundred most
severe accidents in hydrocarbon-chemical industries
around the world over the last 30 years is attributed to
natural disasters (Steinberg, 2003). An upward trend
in the number of Natechs is also observed in the U.S.
between 1980 and 1989 (Showalter and Myers, 1994)
(Cruz, 2005). Through the period of 1994-2011,
several countries experienced severe NaTech events
due to natural disasters which are initiated either
geologically (i.e. earthquakes) or meteorologically
(i.e. floods, hurricanes and lightning). This section
summarizes several of the most severe NaTech
accidents ever occurred in the past two decades.
The Northridge earthquake in California in 1994
caused around 134-139 Hazmat release incidences as
documented by the Los Angeles County Fire
Department Health Hazardous Materials Division
(HHMD) (Steinberg, 2003; Michael and Ronald,
1997). This number of releases is almost three times
more than the number of Hazmat releases reported
during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 (Cruz et
al., 2004). Releases from petroleum pipelines
recorded a total of 870,550 L (230,000 gal). A loss of
US$15 million is recorded as the emergency response
and clean-up costs. Hazmat releases from other
sources including natural gas pipelines, tank-car and
tank truck were also reported (Michael and Ronald,
1997).
The 7.4 Richter-scale earthquake in Kocaeli in 1999
was reported as one of the deadliest earthquakes in
Turkey (Steinberg et al., 2004). It served as an alert
call rising the attention of authorities, industries and
2
academia to the massive destruction and risk posed by
NaTech disasters (Picou, 2009). The earthquake
struck Turkey's largest refinery plant triggering large
fires, Hazmat releases, oil spills and severe damages
to the refinery (Girgin, 2011). In addition, more than
350 industrial facilities in Kocaeli reported damages
of their plants. Also approximately 6.5 million kg of
hazardous anhydrous ammonia was released into the
air, water and soil from ruptured tanks at one of the
industrial chemical facility because of this disaster.
Over 50,000 kg of diesel fuel leaked into a local
waterway (Izmit Bay) and over 1.2 million kg of
liquid oxygen from impacted storage tanks in a gas
company was released into the environment. A series
of fires in a petrochemical tank farm and several
chemical storage facilities released 350,000 m3 of
crude oil and naphtha into the atmosphere (Cruz,
2003).
In Southern France in 2002, heavy flood struck
several hydrocarbon storage facilities causing severe
damage to electrical equipment i.e. pumps and motors,
damage to safety systems i.e. gas detectors,
emergency water systems, and other monitoring
systems as well as leakage of hazardous materials
including hydrogen chloride and sulphuric acid
(Vallee, 2003). Also in 2002 in the Czech Republic, a
flood caused a spillage of 80 ton of liquefied chlorine
and 10 tons of chlorine gas (Cruz et al., 2004).
Katrina hurricane in 2005 caused one of the largest
inland oil spills in the U.S. history which affected the
Chalmette community. Approximately 1,050,000
gallons of oil was released due to damages throughout
the Murphy Oil Refinery. A total of over eight million
gallons of oil was released throughout the
geographical area impacted by Hurricane Katrina
(Picou, 2009). A total of 2000/3000 of oil and gas
offshore and onshore platforms were affected with a
hundred of them were completely destroyed.
Hundreds of miles of oil and gas pipelines were
displaced or broken (inland and offshore) (Cruz and
Krausmann, 2009).
One of the most recent massive NaTech accidents
occurred on 11 March 2011 in Japan which was
attributed to the tremendous 9.0 magnitude
earthquake, resulting to tsunami with a wave height of
more than 30 m. It is recorded as the most destructive
disaster with a total economic damage exceeding
US$210 billion. It triggered a number of NaTech
accidents including damages of the Fukushima and
Onagawa nuclear power plants, fires and explosions
of a refinery in Chiba and a petrochemical plant in
Sendai (Petrova and Krausmann, 2011).
Proceedings of the 1st AUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster
3 EXISTING METHODS FOR NATECH RISK
ASSESSMENT, MANAGEMENT AND
PREVENTION
Extensive searching on the literature shows increasing
efforts especially by the academia towards the
development of methods and frameworks for
assessing and managing the risk of NaTech events as
well as preventing or mitigating the consequences
posed by such events. This section discusses some of
these available methods.
3.1 Assessment Methods
Several important efforts have been done in recent
years dedicated to developing screening tools for
assessing NaTech hazard and risk (Busini et al.,
2011). One of them includes the inclusion of NaTech
scenarios in the framework of Quantitative Risk
Assessment (QRA) (Vetere et al., 2004). In order to
allow the QRA of NaTech events, the equipment
vulnerability models should be defined. This is
necessary to estimate the equipment damage
probability on the basis of severity or intensity
parameters of the natural disaster event.
Among the notable works associated with this was
presented by Cruz and Okada (2008). They proposed
Rabid Natech Risk Assessment (RNRA) as a method
for preliminary assessment of NaTech risk in urban
areas. This method is applicable to any type of natural
disaster (e.g. earthquake and flood). It is
straightforward to be used by either experts or non-
experts as well as to quickly identify areas with high
NaTech risk. The methodology takes into account
possible interactions between the various systems in
the urban environment; the physical infrastructure
(e.g. chemical plants), the community (e.g. population
exposed), the natural environment (e.g. river basins),
and the risk and emergency management systems (e.g.
structural and non-structural measures). The RNRA
comprises various steps; data collection and inventory
development, hazard identification and vulnerability
analysis, and estimation of a NaTech risk index
(NRIi) for each Hazmat-containing storage tank. The
calculated NRIi value is then used to identify areas
with high NaTech risk (Cruz and Okada 2008).
Antonioni et al., (2009) developed a systematic
framework for quantitative assessment of the NaTech
risk. Different damage modes of process equipment
and accidental scenarios that may be possibly
triggered from the disaster can be identified using this
framework. This framework is applicable to both
earthquake and floods scenarios (Antonioni et al.
2009). Also a lot of concerns have been directed to
the development of equipment vulnerability models to
estimate equipment damage probability associated
Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014
with earthquake scenarios, but not much have been
done for flood scenarios (Cozzani et al., 2013).
Landucci et al. (2012) proposed a mechanical damage
model for assessing the vulnerability of atmospheric
vertical vessels to floods. The model correlates the
possibility of damage to 1) the maximum height of
floodwater (hw) and 2) the maximum water velocity
(vw) (Landucci et al., 2012).
A very recent development is by Girgin and
Krausmann (2013) which introduced a method that
includes the estimation of on-site natural hazard
parameters, determination of damage probabilities of
plant units, and assessment of probability and severity
of possibly triggered NaTech events. The
methodology is called RAPID-N, by which rapid local
and regional NaTech risk assessments and mapping
can be conducted with minimal data input. RAPID-N
facilitates on-line NaTech risk assessment by
featuring a user-friendly interface with advanced data
entry, visualization, and analysis tools. This method
does not require any commercial software libraries.
Moreover, the method has the merit of preserving
confidentialities by supporting data protection and
access restriction for critical information i.e. plant unit
data and the associated risk assessments. The RAPID-
N is applicable to different natural hazards and types
of plant unit (Girgin and Krausmann 2013).
3.2 NaTech Risk Management
To date, there is no specific regulation that takes
NaTech risk into consideration. Natural and
technological disasters have always been managed as
separate events. The rise of NaTech events in the last
two decades makes it necessary for industries to
establish a risk management programs that bring
natural disasters into consideration. One possibility
that worth to be looked at is modification of the
current legislations such as SEVESO Directive and
OSHA to take NaTech into consideration. Also
NaTech management should be integrated into the
already existing technological risk management
frameworks, legislations and policies (Cruz et al.,
2004). Assessment methodologies and tools would be
of great importance for NaTech risk management.
3.3 Prevention Methods
The strategy for prevention and mitigation of NaTech
risk is based on the common principles used for
managing safety. Land-use planning as well as
environmental and safety permit granting for
establishments of new facilities are two important
strategies for preventing and mitigating NaTech
accidents. Also risk mapping is an excellent tool for
risk management as well as in land-use planning
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Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014 Proceedings of the 1st AUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster
besides to increase awareness and preparedness for
NaTech incidents (Vetere et al., 2004).
3.3.1 Land-use Planning
One of the basic strategies for preventing and
mitigating risk of NaTechs is the issue of location.
The municipalities should be responsible for land-use
planning. Their responsibilities include knowing about
the natural conditions (e.g. areas with poor ground-
stability, dams and calculated flood areas) in the
municipality and responsibility for the location of new
buildings. The construction of vulnerable buildings
and technical installations should be avoided in areas
that suffer from natural hazards. However, in normal
cases, a large proportion of buildings are already
being constructed before careful consideration is
given to natural risks in the area (Vetere et al., 2004).
3.3.2 Environmental and Safety Assessments for
Establishments of New Facilities
Environmental and safety assessments for new
technological establishments , including NaTech
safety, is to a great extent a responsibility of the
company itself as well as the permit-granting
authorities. For example, the permission for hazardous
installations (including Seveso II) and establishments
of new technological facilities that can affect the
environment must be granted prior to performing any
work based on environmental and safety assessments.
In these assessments the location and land-use around
the site are one of the important issues. It is also
important that ground stability (landslide risk) and
flood risk are taken into consideration during this
process (Vetere et al., 2004).
3.3.3 Risk Mapping
In managing NaTech based risks, it is important to
map ground stability in built-up areas. The map
should be used as a support for the county
administrative boards and the municipalities to
indicate the areas with potential risk of landslide.
Such mapping will highlight those areas that require
more detailed ground stability investigations (Vetere
et al., 2004).
4 NATECH CONSIDERATION IN
PETRO(CHEMICAL) PLANT DESIGN
Natech risk should be taken into considerations at
early stages of chemical and petrochemical plant
development and design. Plants with hazardous
materials should be equipped with equipment that
monitor and control whenever deviations occur. It is
evident that NaTech consideration in petro(chemical)
plant design plays an important role in risk
prevention. This was witnessed during the Northridge
4
earthquake when the industrial facilities experienced
severe damages. Also losses of fire protection water
from the onsite storage tanks occurred due to water
pipes failure. Despite that, the inclusion of seismic gas
shutoff valves in the plant design played an effective
role in preventing fire and explosion from occurring
(Michael et al., 1997).
The adoption of appropriate seismic building codes
for new plant structures and retrofitting of older plant
structures to current engineering building codes can
help minimize loss of lives and properties. For
example, California has adopted the Unified Building
Code (UBC) (1997), which requires design of
buildings for a 1 in 475-year earthquake. The design
of plant utilities, pipeline systems, and processing
units should be based on the recommended design and
safety standards set by engineering and professional
associations such as the American Society of Civil
Engineers (ASCE), the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME), or the American
Petroleum Institute (API) (Cruz and Okada 2008).
In Japan, industrial facilities are constructed based on
the Building Standard (BS) Law (revised in 1981) also
known as “New Seismic Design Method”. It is
evident that engineered buildings constructed under
the revised BS Law are designed for greater strength
and stiffness than similar buildings in the U.S. and
tend to be more redundant as well as providing
adequate protection against earthquakes (Cruz and
Okada 2008).
5 CONCLUSION
Chemical and petrochemical are highly vulnerable to
natural disasters. Natural disasters could trigger
another tragic event when striking an inherently
hazardous establishments (e.g. chemical and
petrochemical plants) causing what is called NaTech
events. NaTech accident can be a direct or an indirect
cause to severe damage to industrial facilities leading
to loss of containment, Hazmat releases, oil spills,
fires and explosions, fatalities, injuries, and economic
losses. In the last two decades, NaTechs recorded a
rise causing a growing attention among the industries,
academia as well as authorities. Several risk
assessment methods have been developed to assess
the NaTech-prone areas and NaTech risks, as well as
the vulnerability of industrial equipment. The goal of
developing the tools and conducting the assessment is
the prevention of NaTechs and mitigation of their
impacts.
A significant number of NaTech accidents have
occurred in the last two decades causing severe
damages to petro(chemical) industries around the
Proceedings of the 1st AUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster
world. These NaTechs are attributed to natural
disasters which are either geological-based (i.e.
earthquakes) or meteorological-based (i.e. floods,
hurricanes and lightning). Unfortunately there is no
specific management program/law that takes NaTech
risk into account. Individual actions have been taken
by many countries that are vulnerable to Natech
events in order to assess, prevent or mitigate and
reduce the risk of NaTechs. Natural and technological
disasters have been managed as separate events. The
growing number of NaTech events in the last twenty
years necessitates the establishment of risk
management plans as well as modifications to the
current legislations to take such events into
consideration. Also the integration between NaTech
management and the already existing technological
risk management frameworks, legislations and
policies should be done.
Land-use planning, environmental and safety
assessment-based permit for new technological
establishments as well as risk mapping are vital
approaches for the management, prevention and
mitigation of NaTechs risk. Risk mapping also helps
in land-use planning and in increasing awareness and
preparedness for NaTech incidents. NaTech
consideration in petro(chemical) plant design plays a
major role in minimizing the loss of lives and
properties.
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