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Modelling Industrial Vulnerabilities within a Multi-hazard Framework for the Resilience of the Territories
Full text linkL'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen
Hydric erosion in touristic beaches influenced by extreme rainfall events: case contribution of the pluvial drainage of the Ancon Hotel, Cuba
Full text linkIn some areas of the world, due to climate change, some natural hazards have expected return periods shorter
than those considered to build single infrastructures long decades ago. The delays in adopting corrective actions
join this issue, increasing the number of disrupting events triggered by natural hazards. Specifically, the tourism
and entertainment industry disruptions induced by natural events may cause severe environmental, economic,
and service functionality losses. In Cuba, 89 % of the beaches show signs of erosion; therefore, this problem
represents a national priority established in the Cuban State Plan to Confront Climate Change. This plan sets the
identification of existing vulnerability and the undertaking of actions to reduce it, as well as the recovery of
beaches, prioritizing those for tourist use. The goal was to evaluate the contribution of one hotel's storm
drainage system to the hydric erosion in the hotel's beach sector and its mitigation. The Ancon Hotel, located in
Trinidad, Cuba, was used as a study case. The hydrologic calculations of the design rainstorm used the isoyetic
map of maximum daily rainfall for 1 % probability and the calculation nomogram for different probabilities and
time duration in the Republic of Cuba. Two scenarios were performed: Scenario 1: A 20 % probability of rainfall
with a duration time of 10 minutes, a rain intensity of 1.83 mm/min was taken. Scenario 2: A 5 % probability of
rainfall with a duration time of 5 minutes, established according to the degree of protection to be provided to
the installation, considering the category of the work and the ecological damage it may cause, a rain intensity
of 3.1 mm/min was taken. It was shown that erosion is predominantly of hydric origin, with gully-type erosion
manifestations evaluated as critical and intense, limiting the tourist use of the beach. The rainfall erosivity,
enhanced by technical and organizational deficiencies in the hotel's storm drainage system, the erodability of
soil, and the presence of built elements, lead to increased flows towards the beach berm and influence changes
in flow velocities. A corrective measures plan was designed to mitigate erosion based on minimizing the
stormwater runoff to the beach and good beach management practices. The radical solutions contemplated
eliminating the built environment and evacuating rainwater from the roofs for reuse to irrigate green areas.
Implementing the proposed measures by beach operators enabled the Ancon Hotel's requalification, reducing
the risk caused by natural events, building resilience against natural events, and contributing to the
sustainability of tourism in Cuba
Implementation of a Natech Vulnerability Index in a Seveso Plant
Full text linkNaTech accidents are a class of cascading events that occur when natural and technological hazards collide.
In the process industry, where multi-hazard substances are used in large quantities, failures due to natural
events can bring simultaneously or sequentially events of acute toxicity, fire, and explosion, which might impact
the population and the environment, also provoking economical losses.
The risk analysis methodology used by the Seveso industry often resulted in scenarios related to NaTech events
being excluded due to their low probability. However, the increasing impacts of climate change may lead to
variations in the recurrence of severe unexpected natural events that will greatly alter the projected frequency
of NaTech events. For this reason, it is critical that decision-makers be adequately informed about potential
NaTech risks and consider them not only in industrial safety reports but also in the provisions of emergency and
city plans. In this paper, a planning tool is used to assess NaTech risk at a Seveso facility that manufactures
lubricating oil additives.
A validated method was used to cross the information among the vulnerable industrial items, the typical damage
modes triggered by the natural hazards, and the hazardous substances involved in the plant. The information
was extracted from the public inventory of establishments at risk of major accidents connected with dangerous
substances, and the safety report that the plant draws up.
The results provide an early warning system to the decision-makers about the NaTech vulnerabilities that
threaten both, human health, and the environment, contributing to increasing their awareness and
preparedness. Further research is required to integrate this kind of analysis with diverse current methodologies
for characterizing NaTech events within territorial and multi-risk approaches
Multi-risk NaTech vulnerability indicator: A step further
Full text linkNaTech events involve technological disasters triggered by natural hazards, leading to hazardous material releases. Their multi-risk nature necessitates comprehensive vulnerability assessments to enhance system preparedness. This research presents a further step towards a multi-risk NaTech vulnerability assessment for industrial plants, refining a previous methodology with reference to a case study. A wide flexible selection of natural hazards is proposed, emphasizing the need for a “location priority factor” that considers hazard spatial influence, the conditional probability of NaTech events based on industrial macro-sectors, and cascading effects between hazards. Additionally, interactions among neighboring infrastructures are introduced as an extra hazard factor. To ensure consistency with prior research and historical NaTech data, a broader set of harmonized industrial item categories is defined. The study highlights the dynamic vulnerability of critical items within a plant, considering their layout proximity and functional interconnections. Moreover, multi-risk assessment is improved by integrating quantitative criteria for ratings derived from historical NaTech analyses. An enhanced index for assessing major industrial accident potential based on hazardous substance criteria is proposed in alignment with European legislation. The proposed decision matrix combining independent evaluations of infrastructure and substance-related factors may support risk assessment through varying levels of tolerance, guiding preparedness strategies for industrial systems
Critical infrastructure multi-risk deployment: An innovative framework to support NaTech preparedness in industrial facilities
Full text linkNaTech events—technological accidents triggered by natural hazards—may lead to catastrophic scenarios harming people, the environment, and the economy. Yet, given the multi-risk nature of NaTech scenarios, many industrial facilities remain unprepared due to the lack of context-specific guidelines. This research develops a multi-risk framework based on previously discussed opportunities to strengthen a NaTech indicator, translating it into an operational methodology to improve industrial preparedness for NaTech events. Consequently, the Quality Function Deployment tool was adapted into the Industrial Critical Infrastructure Multi-Risk Deployment (ICI-MRD) framework—a practical roadmap for integrating advanced multi-risk considerations into industrial safety design. This novel adaptation addresses criteria from disaster risk reduction, land use planning, policy analysis, and resilience engineering by combining innovative engineering tools with multidisciplinary approaches. Moreover, a location priority factor (LPF) was introduced to contextualize the territorial vulnerabilities. A rating system was integrated for multi-risk assessment, including criteria based on quantitative historical data and qualitative evaluation when deterministic data is unavailable. Five categories of priority were associated with the punctual infrastructure multi-risk value as a warning metric. The ICI-MRD framework was then tested in an energy-critical infrastructure, considering four natural hazards, their cascading interactions, and assessing their impact on eight categories of industrial items that mutually interact. The final ICI-MRD output value of 2.07, corresponding to a “moderate” priority, provides data-driven guidance for updating emergency protocols through the analysis of intermediate outputs. These outputs help decision-makers to provide vulnerability-centered strategies to improve both industrial and territorial preparedness while fostering dialogue among operators, practitioners, governments, and the public
A territorial view of the infrastructure resilience
Full text linkThe challenge to make cities and, more in general, the territories inhabited or exploited by humans safe, and resilient, includes mitigation and adaptation strategies against disaster, as a central issue in achieving sustainability. A tool to measure local vulnerability from a multi-risk approach is proposed and discussed. The tool consists of a mathematical framework for the territorial vulnerability assessment that integrates multiple indicators clustered into three factors defined as sensitivity, pressures, and hazards, weighted according to a participatory procedure. These include the infrastructures at the service of the territories and the effects of their disruption. Cascade effects can be also considered in the model, as mutual influences among factors, to keep into account, as an example, climate change related phenomena. Space-dependent analyses using the Geographical Information System were developed from the multiple nested indicators to project the vulnerability index onto a homogeneous grid in the territory of interest. Thematic maps referring to the systemic vulnerability by different sensitivity components were generated. The tool contributes to increasing the awareness of territorial vulnerability and offers support to resilience-based decision-making in designing technical measures of policies at a local scale, whose managers are potentially disoriented by more complex models. A municipality in North-West Italy was used as a case study, concerning the process/energy infrastructures, within the research activities of the Responsible Risk Resilience Centre from the Polytechnic of Turin to test the vulnerability matrix. Further research is required to implement the framework in different scenarios and develop the model's temporal behaviour
Hydrogen safety in process industry: Systematization of past lessons
Full text linkInterest in hydrogen has grown due to its potential as a green fuel, because hydrogen combustion produces
only water. However, hydrogen presents two significant challenges: its wide flammability range (4%-75%) and
low ignition energy (0.017 mJ), which make leaks highly flammable, and its small molecular size, which easily
penetrates materials, altering their microscopic and macroscopic properties and causing leaks that are difficult
to detect, increasing the risk of invisible fires. To manage these risks, many studies simulate hydrogen leakage
scenarios to establish accurate safety distances. A thorough understanding of hydrogen leakage behaviour and
failure mechanisms is crucial for risk assessment. This study addresses a gap in the existing literature on
hydrogen-related events. The aim is to identify the most critical equipment in conditions of hydrogen exposure
and material degradation in the process industry, to provide support to inspection and monitoring activities for
more effective risk management. The analysis identifies the chemical, petrochemical and manufacturing sectors
as the most vulnerable to the effects of hydrogen. Corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement are frequent causes
of events, mainly affecting pipelines and often resulting in explosions or fire
Multi-scale characterization of industrial infrastructure vulnerability to multiple hazards in their territories
Full text linkDirective 2022/2557 from the European Commission aims to enhance the resilience of critical entities in Europe by integrating with existing European legislation, but it lacks explicit guidance on addressing vulnerabilities. Specifically, major hazard industries (MHIs) are critical infrastructures that face unique risks arising from the interactions of natural and technological hazards (NaTech events); nevertheless, existing policies frequently overlook the potential vulnerabilities of process plants to these complex phenomena. The goal of this research was to systematically characterize the vulnerability of industrial critical infrastructures (ICIs) to various hazards in their territories. A multi-scale procedure was implemented in the Italian context as a case study, where spatial analyses were developed using open data. Starting from the Italian national inventory, the MHIs were clustered in industrial macro-sectors and represented nationally by regions, relating their distribution to meteorological or geophysical data of interest. At the regional scale, the MHIs of the Piedmont Region were represented as punctual elements, associating the population within potential damage zones by province. At the municipal scale, a previously validated multi-hazard tool for vulnerability assessment was then tailored to a reduced scale for specific applications in an industrial context. This adaptation, which considers the two-way interaction between an energetic critical infrastructure and various hazards in its surroundings, delivers a spatial vulnerability profile that may complement the probabilistic analysis of industrial incidental scenarios. In summary, this framework may raise the stakeholders awareness at various levels and with different interests within the industrial accident control decision-making chain, from operators to competent authorities
Vulnerability Scenario Characterization in an Industrial Context using a Natech Indicator and a Territorial Multi-risk Approach
Full text linkA growing number of natural hazards triggering technological accidents (Natech) has been duly reported from all
around the world. However, the multi-hazard and multi-stakeholder character governance of Natech risk is
challenging, it requires a comprehensive territorial approach to elucidate the possible simultaneous scenarios and to
address the protection of industrial installations and their possible safety-relevant interactions with neighboring
critical infrastructures, environment, and communities. Consequently, the goal was to establish a protocol for the
vulnerability characterization between the mutual interdependencies of the industrial and the surrounding multi-risk
contexts where the industry is located. A previously validated Natech Indicator was implemented as an early warning
system, while a multi-risk tool previously validated, was used for the territorial vulnerability characterization in case
of an alert. Spatial analyses using the Geographical Information System (GIS) were developed from multiple
indicators nested in a systemic vulnerability index, represented on a homogeneous grid. Risk scenarios were
generated for the industrial context of interest highlighting the vulnerability to suffering disruptions from natural
hazards and pressures. The results showed that industrial infrastructures might represent a double territory threat,
one regarding their technical characteristics and hazardousness, and the other when their technological items collide
with natural hazards and territorial stressors and provoke cascading events. In addition, the results increase the
awareness of the industrial operators and the planners regarding a set of vulnerabilities only rarely analysed
holistically. Consequently, this approach may contribute to enhancing the preparedness of risk governance and risk
reduction, of both industries and territories. Further research is required to implement this approach in different
industrial contexts addressing the time course of natural disruptions, within a framework to increase resilience
Variación espacio-temporal del coeficiente de atenuación de la luz en la bahía de Cienfuegos, Cuba.
Full text linkIn this work, 16 stations in Cienfuegos Bay were optically classified
in the period from 2009 to 2014 and the spatio-temporal variation of
the average attenuation coefficient of light was determined, as well as
its relationship with chlorophyll a and suspended solids. The average
attenuation coefficient was estimated from an empirical relationship with the Secchi depth and was compared with
the corresponding ones determined by Jerlov
(1976) to determine the optical type of water
of each station. A predominance of C9 (more
turbid) water was obtained, which was mainly
reported in the mouths of the rivers, mainly in
the northern lobe of the bay subjected to anthropization. The greatest variation of the attenuation was detected between the periods
of drought and rain, showing the highest values in rain due to the increase of the nutrient
concentration and the turbulence in the water
column. The spatial variation indicated that
stations 1 and 16 showed minimum and maximum attenuation values respectively due to
their hydrodynamic characteristics. The relationship of the attenuation coefficient with suspended solids on the surface and in turn the attenuation coefficient with chlorophyll a showed
a marked multifactorial relationship
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