As a member of the JRC's TecRisk group, I'm carrying out R&D tasks in the field of risk analysis for natural-hazard impact on critical infrastructures. My research topics include Natech risk assessment, industrial accident data analysis, accident databases and accident consequence modelling. I have a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering and more than two decades of software development experience, including web-based applications and GIS tools. I have designed and developed RAPID-N and eNatech. Supervisors: Dr. Elisabeth Krausmann and Prof. Dr. Ulku Yetis Phone: +39 0332 783680 Address: TP 186, Via E. Fermi, 2749, I-21027, Ispra (VA), Italy
EO AFRICA R&D Facility is a flagship initiative of EO AFRICA with an overarching long-term (> ... more EO AFRICA R&D Facility is a flagship initiative of EO AFRICA with an overarching long-term (> 10 years) goal of supporting an African-European collaboration to enable an active research community and creative innovation processes for a continuous development of Earth Observation (EO) capabilities in Africa. Besides offering a) technical and financial support for 30 research projects to address African EO research challenges related to water scarcity and food security, and b) establishing a digital capacity development platform (Space Academy) to provide domain specific training through face-to-face courses, online courses, webinars, and a massive open online course, the Facility also provides a cloud-based EO data analysis environment (Innovation Lab) to support researchers in accessing and utilizing EO data to produce high-level products and develop innovative EO applications. The Innovation Lab aims to simplify access to data and products (in-situ and EO) and use of open-source...
The Center of Expertise in Big Geodata Science was established in March 2020, during the week Fac... more The Center of Expertise in Big Geodata Science was established in March 2020, during the week Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) building was closed for the first time due to COVID-19. Like the circumstances of the time, the structure and embedding of the Center was also new to ITC. So besides strong signposts for the path to follow, there were also many unknowns. There still are. During the Geo-information Processing Department (ITC-GIP) Expertise Meeting, Serkan presented his experience and lessons learned during the first 18 months of the Center, which is now reaching the end of the initial phase with well-established core facilities serving ITC staff and students, active participation to research and capacity development activities, and a decent visibility both inside and outside ITC.
<p>With the growing ubiquity of large multi-dimensional geodata cub... more <p>With the growing ubiquity of large multi-dimensional geodata cubes, clustering techniques have become essential to extracting patterns and creating insights from data cubes. Aiming to meet this increasing need, we present Clustering Geodata Cubes (CGC): an open-source Python package designed for partitional clustering of geospatial data. CGC provides efficient clustering methods to identify groups of similar data. In contrast to traditional techniques, which act on a single dimension, CGC is able to perform both co-clustering (clustering across two dimensions e.g., spatial and temporal) and tri-clustering (clustering across three dimensions e.g., spatial, temporal, and thematic), as well as of subsequently refining the identified clusters. CGC also entails scalable approaches that suit both small and big datasets. It can be efficiently deployed on a range of computational infrastructures, from single machines to computing clusters. As a case study, we present an analysis of spring onset indicator datasets at continental scale.</p>
Natural hazards, such as floods, landslides, or earthquakes, can trigger accidents in oil and gas... more Natural hazards, such as floods, landslides, or earthquakes, can trigger accidents in oil and gas pipeline transport or distribution systems which can cause damage or failure of system components and the subsequent release of toxic or flammable substances. This type of accident, in which a natural event affects a hazardous infrastructure, is also called natech accident. These accidents can have potentially major impacts on the population, the environment, and industry due to significant direct and indirect costs associated with an accident. A recent analysis on past accidents in pipeline networks in Europe and the USA highlighted the importance of natural hazards as accident causal factors both in oil and gas pipeline systems. This analysis also flagged associated safety and supply-security concerns. Prevention and preparedness are therefore key to preventing casualties, pollution, supply-chain effects, and economic losses due to damage, business interruption and clean-up costs. The present study extended the risk assessment capability of the JRC's RAPID-N framework for rapid natech risk assessment and mapping by integrating a new functionality for assessing the risks of earthquake impacts on oil transport pipelines. With this, the JRC provides a tool to industry and authorities that contributes towards the identification of natech risk hotspots and pipeline system weaknesses with respect to external accident triggers, and it allows an estimation of the potential consequences of such impacts. This report briefly recapitulates the main results of the pipeline natech accident analysis, introduces the main features of RAPID-N, discusses the methodologies selected for assessing the risk of damage and failure in oil transport pipelines due to earthquake impact, and then describes the modifications made to RAPID-N to implement these methodologies. As a final step, the implementation of this new assessment feature is demonstrated through a case study application with RAPID-N.
This section provides an overview of the risks to and impacts from selected industrial and energy... more This section provides an overview of the risks to and impacts from selected industrial and energy facilities that are critical for the European Union (EU), such as chemical facilities, the pharmaceutical industry, refineries, oil and gas pipelines, and offshore facilities. It exemplifies the diversity of incident triggers, risk receptors and impacts by using three iconic case studies. It then discusses the gaps and challenges associated with reducing the risks and their impacts. The section ends with a summary of recommendations for the different stakeholder groups. Some of the discussions are equally valid for types of critical industry and infrastructure other than the ones mentioned above
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has developed a number of methods and tools t... more The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has developed a number of methods and tools that contribute to better resilience of urban regions. Although the tools originally have not been conceived to improve resilience, they can make essential part of a resilience tool suite for national authorities, critical infrastructure owners and other relevant stakeholders. The tools are currently only partly or not connected to each other and the outputs of one cannot be used as input for the other since resilience assessment was not among their primary scope. This is a disadvantage of many available tools worldwide. One of the recommendations for the future is to develop such tools with the scope to fit suitable resilience frameworks that can ensure their connectivity and harmonized interaction. 13 th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering, ICASP13 Seoul, South Korea, May 26-30, 2019 2 Throughout its history the Joint Research Cent...
Clustering Geo-Data Cubes (CGC) is a Python package to perform clustering analysis for multidimen... more Clustering Geo-Data Cubes (CGC) is a Python package to perform clustering analysis for multidimensional geospatial data. The included tools allow the user to efficiently run tasks in parallel on local and distributed systems.
Risk assessment is a prerequisite for understanding the Natech risk and for determining if and wh... more Risk assessment is a prerequisite for understanding the Natech risk and for determining if and which prevention and preparedness measures should be implemented to reduce the risk. The analysis of multihazard risks is a highly complex task and there is no consolidated methodology for assessing the Natech risk. This chapter introduces selected qualitative and semiquantitative Natech risk-analysis methodologies, approaches, and tools of varying levels of resolution. The outcome of these methodologies can be used for evaluating the risk in accordance with the risk-acceptability criteria in place.
Structural prevention and mitigation measures can help prevent damage and hazardous-materials rel... more Structural prevention and mitigation measures can help prevent damage and hazardous-materials releases at industrial facilities, and contribute to reducing their consequences if releases do occur. This chapter introduces a selection of available structural protection measures for different types of natural hazards.
In this chapter, the rapid Natech risk analysis and mapping framework RAPID-N introduced in Chapt... more In this chapter, the rapid Natech risk analysis and mapping framework RAPID-N introduced in Chapter 8 is used to carry out a simplified Natech risk analysis for an industrial facility in Izmit Bay in Turkey that was subjected to a predicted Istanbul earthquake scenario. The results demonstrate RAPID-N’s capability to assess the earthquake impact on an industrial plant, including the simultaneous analysis of the Natech risk at several plant units.
Nato Science Series: IV: Earth and Environmental Sciences
... A Geographic Information System (GIS), with its advanced data integration, query, analysis ..... more ... A Geographic Information System (GIS), with its advanced data integration, query, analysis ... Because GIS products can be produced quickly, multiple scenarios can be evaluated ... from local or regional impacts on the ambient atmosphere, streams, groundwater aquifers, vegetation ...
EO AFRICA R&D Facility is a flagship initiative of EO AFRICA with an overarching long-term (> ... more EO AFRICA R&D Facility is a flagship initiative of EO AFRICA with an overarching long-term (> 10 years) goal of supporting an African-European collaboration to enable an active research community and creative innovation processes for a continuous development of Earth Observation (EO) capabilities in Africa. Besides offering a) technical and financial support for 30 research projects to address African EO research challenges related to water scarcity and food security, and b) establishing a digital capacity development platform (Space Academy) to provide domain specific training through face-to-face courses, online courses, webinars, and a massive open online course, the Facility also provides a cloud-based EO data analysis environment (Innovation Lab) to support researchers in accessing and utilizing EO data to produce high-level products and develop innovative EO applications. The Innovation Lab aims to simplify access to data and products (in-situ and EO) and use of open-source...
The Center of Expertise in Big Geodata Science was established in March 2020, during the week Fac... more The Center of Expertise in Big Geodata Science was established in March 2020, during the week Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) building was closed for the first time due to COVID-19. Like the circumstances of the time, the structure and embedding of the Center was also new to ITC. So besides strong signposts for the path to follow, there were also many unknowns. There still are. During the Geo-information Processing Department (ITC-GIP) Expertise Meeting, Serkan presented his experience and lessons learned during the first 18 months of the Center, which is now reaching the end of the initial phase with well-established core facilities serving ITC staff and students, active participation to research and capacity development activities, and a decent visibility both inside and outside ITC.
<p>With the growing ubiquity of large multi-dimensional geodata cub... more <p>With the growing ubiquity of large multi-dimensional geodata cubes, clustering techniques have become essential to extracting patterns and creating insights from data cubes. Aiming to meet this increasing need, we present Clustering Geodata Cubes (CGC): an open-source Python package designed for partitional clustering of geospatial data. CGC provides efficient clustering methods to identify groups of similar data. In contrast to traditional techniques, which act on a single dimension, CGC is able to perform both co-clustering (clustering across two dimensions e.g., spatial and temporal) and tri-clustering (clustering across three dimensions e.g., spatial, temporal, and thematic), as well as of subsequently refining the identified clusters. CGC also entails scalable approaches that suit both small and big datasets. It can be efficiently deployed on a range of computational infrastructures, from single machines to computing clusters. As a case study, we present an analysis of spring onset indicator datasets at continental scale.</p>
Natural hazards, such as floods, landslides, or earthquakes, can trigger accidents in oil and gas... more Natural hazards, such as floods, landslides, or earthquakes, can trigger accidents in oil and gas pipeline transport or distribution systems which can cause damage or failure of system components and the subsequent release of toxic or flammable substances. This type of accident, in which a natural event affects a hazardous infrastructure, is also called natech accident. These accidents can have potentially major impacts on the population, the environment, and industry due to significant direct and indirect costs associated with an accident. A recent analysis on past accidents in pipeline networks in Europe and the USA highlighted the importance of natural hazards as accident causal factors both in oil and gas pipeline systems. This analysis also flagged associated safety and supply-security concerns. Prevention and preparedness are therefore key to preventing casualties, pollution, supply-chain effects, and economic losses due to damage, business interruption and clean-up costs. The present study extended the risk assessment capability of the JRC's RAPID-N framework for rapid natech risk assessment and mapping by integrating a new functionality for assessing the risks of earthquake impacts on oil transport pipelines. With this, the JRC provides a tool to industry and authorities that contributes towards the identification of natech risk hotspots and pipeline system weaknesses with respect to external accident triggers, and it allows an estimation of the potential consequences of such impacts. This report briefly recapitulates the main results of the pipeline natech accident analysis, introduces the main features of RAPID-N, discusses the methodologies selected for assessing the risk of damage and failure in oil transport pipelines due to earthquake impact, and then describes the modifications made to RAPID-N to implement these methodologies. As a final step, the implementation of this new assessment feature is demonstrated through a case study application with RAPID-N.
This section provides an overview of the risks to and impacts from selected industrial and energy... more This section provides an overview of the risks to and impacts from selected industrial and energy facilities that are critical for the European Union (EU), such as chemical facilities, the pharmaceutical industry, refineries, oil and gas pipelines, and offshore facilities. It exemplifies the diversity of incident triggers, risk receptors and impacts by using three iconic case studies. It then discusses the gaps and challenges associated with reducing the risks and their impacts. The section ends with a summary of recommendations for the different stakeholder groups. Some of the discussions are equally valid for types of critical industry and infrastructure other than the ones mentioned above
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has developed a number of methods and tools t... more The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has developed a number of methods and tools that contribute to better resilience of urban regions. Although the tools originally have not been conceived to improve resilience, they can make essential part of a resilience tool suite for national authorities, critical infrastructure owners and other relevant stakeholders. The tools are currently only partly or not connected to each other and the outputs of one cannot be used as input for the other since resilience assessment was not among their primary scope. This is a disadvantage of many available tools worldwide. One of the recommendations for the future is to develop such tools with the scope to fit suitable resilience frameworks that can ensure their connectivity and harmonized interaction. 13 th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering, ICASP13 Seoul, South Korea, May 26-30, 2019 2 Throughout its history the Joint Research Cent...
Clustering Geo-Data Cubes (CGC) is a Python package to perform clustering analysis for multidimen... more Clustering Geo-Data Cubes (CGC) is a Python package to perform clustering analysis for multidimensional geospatial data. The included tools allow the user to efficiently run tasks in parallel on local and distributed systems.
Risk assessment is a prerequisite for understanding the Natech risk and for determining if and wh... more Risk assessment is a prerequisite for understanding the Natech risk and for determining if and which prevention and preparedness measures should be implemented to reduce the risk. The analysis of multihazard risks is a highly complex task and there is no consolidated methodology for assessing the Natech risk. This chapter introduces selected qualitative and semiquantitative Natech risk-analysis methodologies, approaches, and tools of varying levels of resolution. The outcome of these methodologies can be used for evaluating the risk in accordance with the risk-acceptability criteria in place.
Structural prevention and mitigation measures can help prevent damage and hazardous-materials rel... more Structural prevention and mitigation measures can help prevent damage and hazardous-materials releases at industrial facilities, and contribute to reducing their consequences if releases do occur. This chapter introduces a selection of available structural protection measures for different types of natural hazards.
In this chapter, the rapid Natech risk analysis and mapping framework RAPID-N introduced in Chapt... more In this chapter, the rapid Natech risk analysis and mapping framework RAPID-N introduced in Chapter 8 is used to carry out a simplified Natech risk analysis for an industrial facility in Izmit Bay in Turkey that was subjected to a predicted Istanbul earthquake scenario. The results demonstrate RAPID-N’s capability to assess the earthquake impact on an industrial plant, including the simultaneous analysis of the Natech risk at several plant units.
Nato Science Series: IV: Earth and Environmental Sciences
... A Geographic Information System (GIS), with its advanced data integration, query, analysis ..... more ... A Geographic Information System (GIS), with its advanced data integration, query, analysis ... Because GIS products can be produced quickly, multiple scenarios can be evaluated ... from local or regional impacts on the ambient atmosphere, streams, groundwater aquifers, vegetation ...
Natural events such as earthquakes, floods, and lightning can cause accidents in oil and gas tran... more Natural events such as earthquakes, floods, and lightning can cause accidents in oil and gas transport pipelines with potentially adverse secondary consequences to the population, the environment, or the industrial activity itself. Such accidents are commonly referred to as natech accidents. In order to better understand the dynamics and possible impact of pipeline natech accidents, Action A6 under the EPCIP 2012 Programme aims at analysing accidents caused by natural disasters in oil pipelines.
In the first twelve months of the study, European and U.S. pipeline incident data sources were evaluated and data was collected for further analysis to identify the main accident triggers, system strengths and weaknesses, consequences and lessons learned. Because publicly available European pipeline incident data is limited and data on individual accidents of concern for the study is scarce, public U.S. pipeline incident data was included in the study to obtain information beneficial for the safety of pipeline systems in Europe. Although Action A6 focuses on oil transmission pipelines only, natural gas pipeline incidents were also considered in the data collection due to the abundance of accident data available.
The information sources considered for this study were: the incident database of the Pipeline and Hazardous Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, the database of the U.S. National Response Center, the French ARIA database, and information from EGIG and CONCAWE for Europe.
A database-driven incident data analysis system was developed to rapidly review and categorise the vast amount of incident records according to their causes, dynamics and consequences. Using an automated data-mining process followed by a peer-review of the record data, the pipeline natechs in the database were identified and extracted. The outcome of this process is a fully reviewed and categorised incident database which contains authoritative information on ca. 1,850 pipeline natechs worldwide. As a by-product of the data collection process, the database also includes over 800,000 records involving incidents from all causes in industrial facilities and pipelines (both on- and offshore), and transportation activities. This information is available for future studies in these application areas.
The results of the analysis of the identified data indicate that natural hazards are a non-negligible threat to pipelines transporting hazardous materials. The analysis of the U.S. data set shows that geological hazards triggered 37% of the onshore pipeline natechs analysed. This is followed by meteorological (29%), hydrological (14%), and climatic (14%) hazards. Landslides are the main geological hazard with 46% of the geological incidents, whereas earthquakes represent only 9% within the category. Among meteorological hazards, lightning is the major hazard with 36% of the incidents. 86% of the hydrological hazard related natechs are found to be due to floods. Overall, cold weather related hazards (frost, low temperatures) make up 94% of the pipeline natechs caused by adverse climatic conditions. The current level of uncertainty in the analysed data is estimated as 24%.
In terms of consequences, 55% of the U.S. pipeline natechs involved natural gas, while 45% concerned pipelines transporting other types of substances (mostly crude oil and other hydrocarbons). For natural gas incidents ignition occurred in about 25% of the analysed cases, compared to about 8% for other substances. The likelihood of explosions was much lower, 3% for natural gas, and 2% for other substances. Overall, the number of fatalities and injuries was low, with only one case of a high number of injuries. While this incident was due to multiple pipeline breaks caused by wide-scale flooding it clearly demonstrates the potential for a major impact on the population of Natech events. More than two thirds of the releases from ruptured pipelines entered inland water bodies, followed by on-land releases (25%). The combined property damage due to onshore pipeline natech events amounts to 650 million USD (in 2012 USD).
In contrast to the U.S., the data collection process for Europe was severely hampered by the lack of publicly available pipeline incident information. Generally, for Europe only overview data could be found, whose level of detail was not sufficient to allow an in-depth analysis of incident causes, dynamics and consequences. It would be desirable that information on pipeline incidents and their consequences be collected at a central level in Europe and made available for lessons-learning research. Using the limited European data available, the analysis results show that landslides and floods seem to pose the biggest threat to both oil and gas pipelines in Europe. Lightning is also a non-negligible threat with a high ignition probability in case of gas releases, as well as cold weather, which was identified as the main hazard for the French pipeline natech accident data set.
In the 12 months following this report the in-depth analysis of incident data will be continued with a view to identifying impact and failure modes and lessons learned for future accident prevention and consequence mitigation will also be identified. Based on this, recommendations for Natech scenario development in pipelines and for the formulation of prevention and mitigation measures will be prepared.
Natural hazards can impact oil transmission pipelines with potentially adverse consequences on th... more Natural hazards can impact oil transmission pipelines with potentially adverse consequences on the population and the environment. They can also cause significant economic impacts to pipeline operators. Currently, there is only limited historical information available on the dynamics of natural hazard impact on pipelines and Action A6 of the EPCIP 2012 Programme aimed at shedding light on this issue. For this purpose this study focused on the collection and analysis of hazardous liquid and natural gas transmission pipeline incident data. During the study, European and U.S. incident data sources were reviewed, relevant data was collected, and imported into a specifically developed database-driven incident data analysis system. The analysis system and preliminary results of the incident data analysis were reported in the first year final report of the study. This report presents the findings of the second year of the study that focused on onshore hazardous liquid transmission pipeline natechs, with special emphasis on natural hazard impact and damage modes, incident consequences, and lessons learned for scenario building. Due to the low number of incidents, the European incident data alone was not sufficient to identify natural-hazard specific impact and failure modes at the oil pipeline components and to develop representative natech scenarios. For this reason, data on U.S. pipeline natech incidents was included in this study. Although the dominating natural hazards vary due to geological and climatic differences, the additional use of U.S. data allowed a more complete analysis, the results of which are equally applicable to the European oil pipeline network for selected natural hazards. The analysis of the data available for Europe showed that natechs constitute 4% of all reported oil and petroleum product pipeline incidents in Europe in the last 40 years (1971-2012). The total number of identified natechs is 20. Recent natechs are rare and there is only one pipeline natech incident since 1995. 90% of the natechs involve the pipe body, whereas the remainder involves pump stations. There are no reported natechs at intermediate storage facilities. Geological hazards were the primary trigger (65%), followed by hydrological (20%) and climatic hazards (10%). Meteorological hazards played a minor role. The main incident initiators among geological hazards were landslides and the rest was mostly subsidence events primarily affecting elements other than the pipe body. No earthquake related natech was reported. All hydrological incidents were related to floods and no other water-related hazards such as stream scouring was observed. Although cold weather conditions are common in Europe, only hot weather related climatic natechs were reported that were relatively minor compared to other natechs. The total amount of crude oil and petroleum products released due to natech incidents was 6,000 m³, 40% of which was subsequently recovered. The median release volume was 120 m³ and at least half of the released amount was recovered in 75% of the incidents. The total estimated cost of the natech incidents at oil and petroleum product pipelines in Europe as corrected for inflation is about 40 million Euro. The highest cost for a single event is 14.4 million Euro while the median cost is 0.8 million Euro. The analysis of the U.S. Department of Transportation hazardous liquid transmission pipeline incident data for a period of 25 years (1986-2012) showed that there were 387 natechs corresponding to about 5.5% of all pipeline incidents. The vulnerability of pipeline network components varies significantly with natural hazard and system types. Unlike in Europe, meteorological hazards were the main trigger, resulting in the highest number of incidents (40%) and the highest total cost (60%). Geological and climatic hazards were other major hazards with about 20% contribution each. However, climatic natechs resulted in less than 10% of the total release and the corresponding total cost was even more insignificant (2%). While hydrological hazard triggered incidents occurred less frequently, their consequences were significant and correspond to one third of the total release and overall cost. The analysis also showed that the susceptibility to natural hazards is not uniform among the different hazardous liquid pipeline network parts (e.g. pipe run, pumping/metering stations, and intermediate tank farms/terminals). All incidents related to hydrological hazards involved the main pipeline body; the same holds for incidents caused by geological hazards with more than 75%. However, in case of meteorological and climatic natechs, the distribution shifts towards incidents involving aboveground storage tanks. About 50% of meteorological and 40% of climatic natechs occurred at such tanks, followed by pumping and metering stations with more than 20%. The total amount of hazardous substance released due to the natech incidents was about 50,875 m³ (320,000 barrels) resulting in 590 million USD economic damage. The overall analysis showed that: • There is a tendency to underreport natural hazards as causes of incidents. • Although they occur less frequently, the consequences of natechs can be comparatively more significant than for other pipeline incidents. • The natural hazard damage susceptibility of pipeline systems differs with system type. • Natural hazards do not impact all pipeline system parts equally and some parts are more and even sometimes only susceptible to selected types of natural hazards. • Impact mechanisms at pipeline system parts other than the pipe run are not specific to pipelines and are similar to their counterparts at fixed industrial plants. • Earthquakes are perceived to be a major threat to pipelines but historical data shows that they have not or very rarely triggered natech incidents in hazardous liquid transmission pipelines. • Besides directly triggering incidents, natural hazards can also aggravate other incidents by accelerating causes, facilitating transport of spilled substances, or hampering response and recovery operations. • Slow onset hazards and the variation in time of some natural hazards should be considered during the design and operation of pipeline systems, which typically have a very long operational life. • Regulatory measures for the construction and operation of pipeline systems that consider possible time-varying natural hazard risks and impose comprehensive reporting obligations are necessary for the proper prevention and mitigation of pipeline natechs. • Detailed incident and natural hazard data should be made available for the proper analysis of pipeline natech incidents, especially for regional or global studies. • Besides data availability, data quality and explicit data limitations are equally important and should be carefully evaluated during the analysis. • Pipeline operators should periodically update and complete incident reports if previously unknown or more accurate information becomes available, and competent authorities should encourage and actively follow this process. • In order to support the lessons learning process, operators should be encouraged to also share information on near misses or incidents below the reporting threshold. For this study, a database-driven incident data analysis system was developed to rapidly review, categorise, and query incident records according to their causes and consequences, and link them to related supplementary data. The system provides an automated pre-selection of incidents of potential interest using data mining methods. This can be supplemented by an expert review for manual confirmation of data accuracy, which can be carried out by multiple experts simultaneously. Using this analysis system, about 1,400 fully reviewed and categorised oil and natural gas transmission pipeline natech records were identified from the European and U.S. incident data. Similarly, approximately 2,150 natural gas distribution incidents were also identified as possible natechs and are ready for more detailed peer-review. In addition to onshore incidents, all data sets include offshore incidents, as well. Therefore, the occurrence mechanisms and consequences of offshore pipeline natechs can be studied. As a by-product of the data collection process, the database furthermore includes over 800,000 U.S. National Response Centre incident reports from all causes in industrial and transportation activities, which are automatically classified in the same way as the pipeline incident records. The database is available for future studies and is especially useful for providing case-specific natech data, which is scarce in the scientific literature and in the existing accident databases.
As standards of living generally improve across the globe, there is a corresponding change in peo... more As standards of living generally improve across the globe, there is a corresponding change in people’s perception and acceptance of risk. The impact of natural hazards is an emerging threat to industrial facilities, pipelines, offshore platforms and other infrastructure that handles, stores or transports hazardous substances. When accidentally released, hazardous substances can lead to fires, explosions, and toxic or radioactive releases. These so-called Natech accidents are a recurring but often overlooked feature of many natural disasters and have often had significant human, environmental and economic impacts. Industries and authorities must be able to learn from incidents and capture the lessons that are needed to safely conduct business and produce goods for the whole of society.
Among natural events, storms can seriously affect the integrity of an industrial installation and lead to accident scenarios such as fires, explosions and the dispersion of chemicals in the environment. In addition, scientists expect an overall worsening of extreme weather events in this century due to climate change, which will further increase the threat to industrial facilities.
This report analyses past technological accidents with hazardous materials releases and damage to industrial facilities caused by the impact of storms. It discusses the vulnerability of industrial sites including that of the main equipment types present at the facility and analyses how they are damaged.
The first part of the report describes the storm hazard. It discusses storm types and their occurrence, as well as the main effects that cause damage to human settlements and the environment. The report lists strong winds, heavy precipitation, lightning and storm surge as the main effects responsible for damage to industrial installations.
In the second part of the report, we perform an analysis of past storm-triggered Natech events. Using different sources of public information on technological incidents, this study:
1. Analyses incident statistics;
2. Reviews a number of “landmark” accidents;
3. Discusses the lessons learned.
From the analysis of past events, the report concludes that Natech events caused by storms are frequent and that their relative occurrence is increasing compared to the overall occurrence of technological incidents from other causes in the analysed databases. The largest losses were generally triggered by heavy rain and flooding, while the most frequent trigger was lightning. The study also highlighted the role of a loss of power supply in triggering an accident or hampering the mitigation of its consequences.
The study presents lessons learned from the forensic analysis of past events and puts forward recommendations for future risk reduction for all storm effects. The most important lesson is that storm predictions based on past events are not sufficient to be well prepared for future events, in particular in the face of climate change.
Natural hazards, such as floods, landslides, or earthquakes, can trigger accidents in oil and gas... more Natural hazards, such as floods, landslides, or earthquakes, can trigger accidents in oil and gas pipeline transport or distribution systems which can cause damage or failure of system components and the subsequent release of toxic or flammable substances. This type of accident, in which a natural event affects a hazardous infrastructure, is also called natech accident. These accidents can have potentially major impacts on the population, the environment, and industry due to significant direct and indirect costs associated with an accident.
A recent analysis on past accidents in pipeline networks in Europe and the USA highlighted the importance of natural hazards as accident causal factors both in oil and gas pipeline systems. This analysis also flagged associated safety and supply-security concerns. Prevention and preparedness are therefore key to preventing casualties, pollution, supply-chain effects, and economic losses due to damage, business interruption and clean-up costs.
The present study extended the risk assessment capability of the JRC's RAPID-N framework for rapid natech risk assessment and mapping by integrating a new functionality for assessing the risks of earthquake impacts on oil transport pipelines. With this, the JRC provides a tool to industry and authorities that contributes towards the identification of natech risk hotspots and pipeline system weaknesses with respect to external accident triggers, and it allows an estimation of the potential consequences of such impacts.
This report briefly recapitulates the main results of the pipeline natech accident analysis, introduces the main features of RAPID-N, discusses the methodologies selected for assessing the risk of damage and failure in oil transport pipelines due to earthquake impact, and then describes the modifications made to RAPID-N to implement these methodologies. As a final step, the implementation of this new assessment feature is demonstrated through a case study application with RAPID-N.
The JRC has developed the rapid natech risk assessment and mapping framework RAPID-N which assess... more The JRC has developed the rapid natech risk assessment and mapping framework RAPID-N which assesses the risk of hazardous-materials releases, fires or explosions due to natural hazard impact and maps the results in an online web-based environment. In its current version, RAPID-N estimates the natech risk due to earthquakes. Based on the predicted Istanbul earthquake scenario data provided by the Turkish Government, the JRC carried out case-study applications with RAPID-N to understand the potential impact of the earthquake on a single industrial facility, and to demonstrate the tool’s capability to assess the natech risk at several facilities falling into the earthquake’s impact area simultaneously. The results indicate that possibly major natech accidents are to be expected in case of an earthquake with the severity of the predicted Istanbul event. Given the lack of sufficiently detailed data, this study is to be considered an exercise in assessing the performance of RAPID-N. The results do not constitute a true assessment of the real danger from the analysed facility.
Flooding is one of the major natural hazards that occur frequently, resulting in significant impa... more Flooding is one of the major natural hazards that occur frequently, resulting in significant impacts both to human settlements and the environment. In addition to social and economic damage, floods can also have severe secondary consequences if they impact industrial installations storing, processing, or transporting hazardous substances. Flood waters may cause damage to industrial equipment and lead to fires, explosions, dispersion of toxic plumes, and environmental pollution. Such natural hazard-triggered technological accidents (so-called Natech events) pose significant risks to communities and the environment if adequate preparedness and emergency planning are lacking.
In response to calls by governments for a decision-support tool for the management of Natech risks, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission developed the Rapid Natech Risk Assessment and Mapping Tool (RAPID-N) which is a system for the analysis and mapping of Natech accident risks. The primary aim of the application is rapid local or regional Natech risk analysis with minimum data requirements. Initially, RAPID-N was focused on the impact of earthquakes on fixed hazardous industrial installations but in time it has been extended to cover Natech risks at hazardous liquid transmission pipelines, and currently support for flood hazards is under development.
For credible flood Natech risk assessment, RAPID-N requires accurate on-site flood hazard intensity data, which is difficult to obtain due to the vast amount of data required for the analysis and the complexity of the computations needed to be performed. One data source for this data is the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), which has also been developed by the JRC in close collaboration with the EU Member States. EFAS provides probabilistic flood forecasting information to national authorities within Europe, as well as to the ERCC as early as 10 days before a flood event.
This study explored how RAPID-N and EFAS can benefit from each other’s capabilities by exchanging and making use of valuable information produced by each system. For RAPID-N, flood forecasts published by EFAS can provide on-site natural hazard data required for damage estimations. For EFAS, the results of flood Natech risk analyses with RAPID-N that are based on EFAS forecasts can be useful to enrich the reports and alerts provided to the end users. In order to study the feasibility of collaboration between the two systems, means of interoperability were analysed in this study. Benefits of cooperation between the systems were evaluated and possible methods for data and information sharing are discussed by highlighting advantages and disadvantages of different methods.
The study shows that EFAS can provide overall flood information and flood-related on-site hazard parameters (e.g. water depths) for floods in the near future as forecast by the system, whereas RAPID-N can analyse flood Natech risks and provide information about critical industrial infrastructures (e.g. hazardous facilities, pipelines) in the estimated flood area. Providing means of interoperability between EFAS and RAPID-N can also support a flood Natech alerting functionality for competent authorities and emergency responders. Various methods of interoperability of the two systems are theoretically possible but not all of them are found to be practicable or feasible due to data confidentiality issues. The most appropriate method is found to be publication of feeds for updates in flood forecasts and flood risk assessments and providing standard web services for requesting, aggregating, and sharing related data. The proposed methodology also allows interoperability with other systems.
Le projet d’exercices de sécurité civile EU RICHTER CARAIBES 2017 est coordonné par la Direction ... more Le projet d’exercices de sécurité civile EU RICHTER CARAIBES 2017 est coordonné par la Direction Générale de la Sécurité Civile et de la Gestion des Crises du Ministère de l’Intérieur de la République Française. Le projet EU RICHTER CARAIBES 2017 englobe un exercice de cadres sur table, un exercice de cadres en poste de commandement, et un exercice de terrain. L’objectif de ce rapport technique est de fournir des éléments de référence réalistes pour la mise en place du scénario de l’exercice. En appui au Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM), référent scientifique du projet, le Centre Commun de Recherche de la Commission Européenne a réalisé une étude de scénario Natech afin d’estimer les conséquences des accidents technologiques majeurs pouvant résulter du séisme et du tsunami du scénario sur les installations de la Zone Industrielle de Jarry à Pointe-à-Pitre (971). Cette étude a été basée sur le scénario sismique réalisé par le BRGM dans le cadre du projet, en prenant en compte les activités des sites industriels, la nature et la quantité des matières dangereuses employées, ainsi que les caractéristiques des équipements industriels. L'étude a été réalisée en utilisant RAPID-N, une méthodologie et un outil d’analyse du risque Natech mis en place au Centre Commun de Recherche (CCR) de la Commission Européenne.
The risk of Natech accidents due to earthquakes at hazardous installations in Marsaxlokk Bay in M... more The risk of Natech accidents due to earthquakes at hazardous installations in Marsaxlokk Bay in Malta was analysed and mapped using the RAPID-N tool of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. This study was based on the earthquake scenarios of Malta's National Risk Assessment and it used industry data from safety reports and public resources.
In this study, the risk assessment capabilities of the RAPID-N were improved by designing and imp... more In this study, the risk assessment capabilities of the RAPID-N were improved by designing and implementing features needed for analysing flood impacts on fixed industrial installations. With the developed prototype, which will gradually replace the existing version currently available on-line, the JRC is able to provide a tool to industry and authorities that contributes towards the identification of Natech hotspots with respect to floods and the estimation of the potential consequences. The improved data estimation framework, which was developed in parallel to the flood functionality, allows RAPID-N to support a wider range of data estimation methods and models. The modernized interface streamlines data entry and visualization not only for the desktop users, but also for portable and mobile devices.
Information on the seismic response of chemical containers located in storage racks is very limit... more Information on the seismic response of chemical containers located in storage racks is very limited. Unfortunately, no clearly established data and statistics exist related to potential damage of chemical racking systems during earthquakes. Hence, this work presents an approach for developing fragility curves for chemical racking systems in the cross-aisle direction through dynamic non-linear analysis. It aims to simulate the structural behaviour of various racking systems in the cross-aisle direction for the worst-case scenario, in order to quantify the vulnerability of chemical racks in seismic areas and to better understand the associated natech risk. Analytical fragility curves and a fault tree model were derived and used to evaluate the probabilities of chemical containers falling from racks. The damage state limits were considered as four levels of intensity of loss of containment. Three damage modes (overturning, sliding, and buckling), 2 types of chemical containers (205 l metal drums and 1000 l IBCs), 3 types of rack base anchoring (unanchored, anchored-brittle, and anchored-plastic), and four rack heights (3, 4.5, 6, 7.5, 9 m) were considered in the analysis. Overall, 24 fragility curves were developed based on 26 strong motion records from the PEER Strong Motion database. However, the analytical method employed in this study can also be used for deriving fragility curves for other merchandise types of racking structures. In order to assess the natech risk of a chemical rack containing a flammable substance, to test the developed fragility curves, and to illustrate the natech risk assessment and mapping capabilities of RAPID-N, a case study based on the 1786 Olivieri earthquake scenario was conducted. The findings demonstrate that chemical racks loaded with IBCs are more vulnerable than those loaded with drums and although a very robust anchorage reduces the probability of collapse of the rack, it increases the probability of chemical containers falling.
This document aims to provide basic information about the implementation and usage of the Rapid N... more This document aims to provide basic information about the implementation and usage of the Rapid Natech Risk Assessment Tool: RAPID-N. Following a short description of the technical details and components of the application, the user interface is described. Record related common tasks are introduced and forms used for data entry are explained. Special features, such as multilingual support, fuzzy numbers, record locking, and mapping are described. Record types and tools that form the application are grouped into modules and detailed information is given for each record type in a separate subsection. Information on record types include general description, structure of data fields, details on data entry, and record specific statements, such as implementation details of related calculation methods and algorithms.
In addition to significant direct impacts, natural disasters may also have severe secondary conse... more In addition to significant direct impacts, natural disasters may also have severe secondary consequences by triggering accidents involving fires, explosions and toxic plumes if they impact industrial activities that process, store, or transport hazardous substances. Depending on the severity of the consequences, these so-called Natech events may pose significant risk to the surrounding communities and the environment. In this respect, early-warning or rapid preliminary impact assessment of potential Natech accidents may significantly improve emergency preparedness and response.
This study explored how two natural-hazard related decision support systems developed by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), namely the Global Disaster Alert Coordination System (GDACS) which provides natural disaster alerts and the Rapid Natech Risk Assessment and Mapping System (RAPID-N) which provides comprehensive Natech risk analyses, can benefit from each other’s capabilities enhance the scope and value of their services. For this purpose, the architectures, data exchange mechanisms and analysis capabilities of both systems were studied in detail. Possible means of information sharing were assessed and the feasibility of collaboration between the systems was evaluated.
The study showed that RAPID-N can analyse Natech-related damage and consequences by using the natural hazard data from GDACS and provide information about hazardous industrial establishments in the area affected by the natural disaster. GDACS can benefit from this information to enrich disaster alerts that it sends to a wide range of end users, which currently lack such information. Alert scores can also be modified according to the Natech risks, especially if high-impact hazardous consequences are expected. A feasible method of interoperability between the systems is found to be the use of the GDACS task scheduler to push natural hazard data to RAPID-N to initiate industry-related analysis, followed by generation of the analysis outputs in a standard XML-based format by RAPID-N, and processing of these outputs by GDACS to include available information into the disaster alerts. Both GDACS and RAPID-N already have the components needed for such an integration. In fact, GDACS utilizes a similar mechanism internally for the computation of natural hazard impacts for different hazards through its sub-systems. The same methodology can also be used by both systems for interoperability with other systems.
Recommendations for National Risk Assessment for Disaster Risk Management in EU: Approaches for identifying, analysing and evaluating risk, 2019
Decision No 1313/2013/EU on a Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) calls Participating States ... more Decision No 1313/2013/EU on a Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) calls Participating States to develop risk assessments periodically and make the summary of their National Risk Assessment (NRA) available to the European Commission as a way to prevent disaster risk in Europe. In order to facilitate countries on this task, the European Commission developed the Guidelines on risk assessment and mapping. In spite of these, the summaries received have revealed several challenges related to the process and the content of the assessments.
The current report aims to provide scientific support to the UCPM participant countries in their development of NRA, explaining why and how a risk assessment could be carried out, how the results of this could be used for Disaster Risk Management planning and in general, how science can help civil protection authorities and staff from ministries and agencies engaged in NRA activities. The report is the result of the collaborative effort of the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre team and nine Joint Research Centre expert groups which provided their insight on tools and methods for specific risk assessment related to certain hazards and assets: drought, earthquakes, floods, terrorist attacks, biological disasters, critical infrastructures, chemical accidents, nuclear accidents and Natech accidents.
The chapter on Natech accidents (Chapter 16) describes the context of Natech risk assessment within the National Risk Assessment process. Natech-specific aspects in risk identification, risk analysis and risk evaluation phases of the risk assessment are discussed in detail. Good practices for Natech risk assessment are provided and existing gaps and challenges for effective Natech risk assessment are indicated.
Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2019 (GAR 2019), May 15, 2019
The fifth edition of the United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR)... more The fifth edition of the United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) is being issued four years after the adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (Sendai Framework).
This edition of GAR is the first punctuation mark in the implementation of the Sendai Framework. It offers an update on progress made in implementing the outcome, goal, targets and priorities of the Sendai Framework and disaster-related Sustainable Development Goals. It provides an analysis of how risk science is changing, presents areas for additional endeavour, and explores aspects of understanding and managing systemic risk. It presents innovative research and practice for pursuing risk-informed sustainable development, and provides an introduction to the wider scope and nature of hazards and related risks to be considered.
Chapter 3 of the report on "risk" investigates how we currently monitor and model a range of hazards, including tsunamis, landslides, floods and fires. Other hazards are less familiar as they were not part of the Hyogo Framework for Action. However, they are part of the Sendai Framework and include: biological, nuclear/radiological, chemical/industrial, NATECH (natural hazards triggering technological disasters) and environmental hazards. Chapter 3 looks at our understanding of how these hazards interact with exposure and vulnerability.
Chapter 3.1.9 on "Natech" describes Natech events which are a recurring but often overlooked fature in many disaster situations. Besides providing examples of important Natech accidents that occurred in the past, the characteristics of Natech risk are discussed. Information on Natech risk drivers and instruments for effective Natech risk management are explained, together with how progress in Natech risk reduction can be measured.
Nato Science Series: IV: Earth and Environmental Sciences, 2005
... A Geographic Information System (GIS), with its advanced data integration, query, analysis ..... more ... A Geographic Information System (GIS), with its advanced data integration, query, analysis ... Because GIS products can be produced quickly, multiple scenarios can be evaluated ... from local or regional impacts on the ambient atmosphere, streams, groundwater aquifers, vegetation ...
Towards an All-Hazards Approach to Emergency Preparedness and Response: Lessons Learnt from Non-Nuclear Events, Jan 2018
Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, floods, storms, extreme temperatures, etc. can trigger fire... more Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, floods, storms, extreme temperatures, etc. can trigger fires, explosions and toxic or radioactive releases at hazardous installations and other infrastructures that process, store or transport dangerous substances. These technological secondary effects of natural hazard impacts are also called "Natech" accidents (from "natural hazard-triggered technological accident"). Natech accidents are frequent in the wake of natural disasters, and they have repeatedly had significant and long-term social, environmental and economic impacts (e.g. Krausmann and Cruz, 2013; Girgin, 2011; Krausmann, Cruz and Affeltranger, 2011; Godoy, 2007). It should be noted that Natech accidents can be triggered by any kind of natural hazard; a major natural hazard, like a strong earthquake or a hurricane, is not necessarily required to cause a Natech event. Recent studies highlighted that the specific aspects of Natech risk are unfortunately often overlooked in chemical accident prevention programmes and disaster risk reduction frameworks, causing Natech accidents to recur (Krausmann and Baranzini, 2012). This is compounded by the predicted increase of Natech risk as a result of worldwide industrialisation, climate change, population growth and community encroachment on natural hazard zones. This outlook has triggered initiatives that aim to close gaps in Natech risk reduction. For instance, the OECD Working Group on Chemical Accidents has recently produced a Natech Addendum to the OECD Guiding Principles on Chemical Accident Prevention, Preparedness and Response (OECD, 2015). This chapter will introduce the problem of Natech risks with a focus on emergency planning and response. It will present major lessons learnt that were obtained from an in-depth analysis of Natech accidents in the European Commission's eNatech accident database (http://enatech.jrc.ec.europa.eu) and make recommendations on how to close remaining gaps. A comprehensive treatment of Natech risks and how to manage them is available in Krausmann, Cruz and Salzano (2017).
Comparative Risk Assessment and Environmental Decision Making, Jan 2005
Although occurrence of disasters cannot be prevented completely, it is possible to minimize their... more Although occurrence of disasters cannot be prevented completely, it is possible to minimize their hazards by taking precautions and applying effective emergency response plans. In addition to measures taken to reduce economical and human losses, an environmental dimension is required in these plans to control environmental pollution and lessen possible adverse effects on both ecosystems and human health, which in the long term may cost much more than direct disaster losses. Technological accidents triggered by natural disasters are one of the most important factors increasing the environmental damage. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to prepare regional plans considering both natural and technological disasters and aiming the coordination and resource sharing between the related authorities, institutions and factories. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are powerful tools having comprehensive data query, analysis, and visualization capabilities, and they may facilitate preparation of such emergency plans. In this paper, the role of GIS in emergency response plans is explained. A case study from Turkey utilizing GIS extensively for regional environmental emergency planning is given and problems that can be faced in developing countries are discussed.
Words Into Action Guidelines: National Disaster Risk Assessment - Governance System, Methodologies and Use of Results, May 2017
In 2016 the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) commissioned the developme... more In 2016 the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) commissioned the development of guidelines on national disaster risk assessment (NDRA) as part of a series of thematic guidelines under its “Words into Action” initiative to support national implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.
The present Guidelines are the result of the collaboration between over 100 leading experts from national authorities, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, academia, think tanks and private-sector entities. They focus on Sendai Framework’s first Priority for Action: Understanding Disaster Risk, which is the basis for all measures on disaster risk reduction and is closely linked to the other three Priorities for Action.
"Natech Hazard and Risk Assessment" section in Part 3 of the Guidelines covers in-depth information on conducting risk assessment for Natech hazards.
In this chapter, the rapid Natech risk analysis and mapping framework RAPID-N introduced in Chapt... more In this chapter, the rapid Natech risk analysis and mapping framework RAPID-N introduced in Chapter 8 is used to carry out a simplified Natech risk analysis for an industrial facility in Izmit Bay in Turkey that was subjected to a predicted Istanbul earthquake scenario. The results demonstrate RAPID-N’s capability to assess the earthquake impact on an industrial plant, including the simultaneous analysis of the Natech risk at several plant units.
Structural prevention and mitigation measures can help prevent damage and hazardous-materials rel... more Structural prevention and mitigation measures can help prevent damage and hazardous-materials releases at industrial facilities, and contribute to reducing their consequences if releases do occur. This chapter introduces a selection of available structural protection measures for different types of natural hazards.
Risk assessment is a prerequisite for understanding the Natech risk and for determining if and wh... more Risk assessment is a prerequisite for understanding the Natech risk and for determining if and which prevention and preparedness measures should be implemented to reduce the risk. The analysis of multihazard risks is a highly complex task and there is no consolidated methodology for assessing the Natech risk. This chapter introduces selected qualitative and semiquantitative Natech risk-analysis methodologies, approaches, and tools of varying levels of resolution. The outcome of these methodologies can be used for evaluating the risk in accordance with the risk-acceptability criteria in place.
This poster is presented at the European Civil Protection Forum 2018 at the JRC stand. It summari... more This poster is presented at the European Civil Protection Forum 2018 at the JRC stand. It summarizes what Natech accidents are, why they are a problem, and it gives an overview of the JRC's activities in the field, including Natech risk assessment and mapping (RAPID-N), Natech accident database (eNatech), Natech accident analysis for lessons learned and recommendations, emergency management support, and capacity building (e.g. Natech risk assessment trainings).
Availability of data on accidents and chemical inventories, together with assessment and analysis... more Availability of data on accidents and chemical inventories, together with assessment and analysis tools is a prerequisite for integrated control of industrial accidents. Although Turkey has a developing industry, legislative measures for control of industrial accidents are lacking, past accidents are not systematically enlisted and industrial facilities and hazardous substances thereof are not properly registered. While some accident data is available in international databases, they are incomplete and erroneous. In the present study, a decision support system has been developed for collection and analysis of past accident information, assessment of current accident potentials of industrial establishments and modeling of probable accidents to reveal risks possessed thereby. The system supports web based multilingual and multi-user environment,and aims contribution of all interested parties in a collaborative manner. Information on technological accidents can be systematically archived together with reference data and visual materials. Initial data covering a time period of 30 years has been provided. The system is capable of storing hazard classifications and physico-chemical properties of substances, and providing standardized data for calculations. It can determine major-accident potential of industrial facilities as dictated by the 96/82/EC Directive of the EU and update relevant information automatically as required. An easy to use accident model for rapid assessment of off-site consequences of industrial accidents is also featured. Developed system allows integrated management of data on industrial accidents and provides decision support tools for assessing current and future accident potential,which can be used for national as well as the EU needs.
Computerized data visualization and analysis tools, especially Geographic Information Systems (GI... more Computerized data visualization and analysis tools, especially Geographic Information Systems (GIS), constitute an important part of today̕s water resources development and management studies. In order to obtain satisfactory results from such tools, accurate and comprehensive hydrography datasets are needed that include both spatial and hydrologic information on surface water resources and watersheds. If present, such datasets may support many applications, such as hydrologic and environmental modeling, impact assessment, and construction planning. The primary purposes of this study are production of prototype national hydrography and watershed datasets for Turkey, and development of GIS-based tools for the analysis of local water quality and quantity data. For these purposes national hydrography datasets and analysis systems of several counties are reviewed, and based on gained experience; 1) Sub-watershed boundaries of 26 major national basins are derived from digital elevation model of the country by using raster-based analysis methods and these watersheds are named according to coding system of the European Union, 2) A prototype hydrography dataset with built-in connectivity and water flow direction information is produced from publicly available data sources, 3) GIS based spatial tools are developed to facilitate navigation through streams and watersheds in the hydrography dataset, and 4) A state-of-the art GIS-based stream flow and water quality data analysis system is developed, which is based on the structure of nationally available data and includes advanced statistical and spatial analysis capabilities. All datasets and developed tools are gathered in a single graphical user-interface within GIS and made available to the end-users.
6th International Symposium & Exhibition on Environmental Contamination in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Sep 2003
A national hydrographic data set can be defined as a comprehensive set of digital spatial data th... more A national hydrographic data set can be defined as a comprehensive set of digital spatial data that encodes information about naturally occurring and constructed bodies of water, paths through which water flows, and related entities. In the study, national hydrographic datasets of several countries are reviewed. Based on the reviewed datasets, initial studies are conducted in a small watershed in Turkey, Küçük Menderes Basin, to develop a similar national hydrographic data set for Turkey. Using GIS methods, the drainage network of the watershed has been obtained from the digital elevation model (DEM). Connectivity information, Strahler order, flow length, slope, and similar hydrologic information are calculated and linked to the stream reaches. The boundaries of the catchments are created from the DEM, and a three-level hydrologic cataloging unit hierarchy is formed.
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Papers by Serkan Girgin
In the first twelve months of the study, European and U.S. pipeline incident data sources were evaluated and data was collected for further analysis to identify the main accident triggers, system strengths and weaknesses, consequences and lessons learned. Because publicly available European pipeline incident data is limited and data on individual accidents of concern for the study is scarce, public U.S. pipeline incident data was included in the study to obtain information beneficial for the safety of pipeline systems in Europe. Although Action A6 focuses on oil transmission pipelines only, natural gas pipeline incidents were also considered in the data collection due to the abundance of accident data available.
The information sources considered for this study were: the incident database of the Pipeline and Hazardous Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, the database of the U.S. National Response Center, the French ARIA database, and information from EGIG and CONCAWE for Europe.
A database-driven incident data analysis system was developed to rapidly review and categorise the vast amount of incident records according to their causes, dynamics and consequences. Using an automated data-mining process followed by a peer-review of the record data, the pipeline natechs in the database were identified and extracted. The outcome of this process is a fully reviewed and categorised incident database which contains authoritative information on ca. 1,850 pipeline natechs worldwide. As a by-product of the data collection process, the database also includes over 800,000 records involving incidents from all causes in industrial facilities and pipelines (both on- and offshore), and transportation activities. This information is available for future studies in these application areas.
The results of the analysis of the identified data indicate that natural hazards are a non-negligible threat to pipelines transporting hazardous materials. The analysis of the U.S. data set shows that geological hazards triggered 37% of the onshore pipeline natechs analysed. This is followed by meteorological (29%), hydrological (14%), and climatic (14%) hazards. Landslides are the main geological hazard with 46% of the geological incidents, whereas earthquakes represent only 9% within the category. Among meteorological hazards, lightning is the major hazard with 36% of the incidents. 86% of the hydrological hazard related natechs are found to be due to floods. Overall, cold weather related hazards (frost, low temperatures) make up 94% of the pipeline natechs caused by adverse climatic conditions. The current level of uncertainty in the analysed data is estimated as 24%.
In terms of consequences, 55% of the U.S. pipeline natechs involved natural gas, while 45% concerned pipelines transporting other types of substances (mostly crude oil and other hydrocarbons). For natural gas incidents ignition occurred in about 25% of the analysed cases, compared to about 8% for other substances. The likelihood of explosions was much lower, 3% for natural gas, and 2% for other substances. Overall, the number of fatalities and injuries was low, with only one case of a high number of injuries. While this incident was due to multiple pipeline breaks caused by wide-scale flooding it clearly demonstrates the potential for a major impact on the population of Natech events. More than two thirds of the releases from ruptured pipelines entered inland water bodies, followed by on-land releases (25%). The combined property damage due to onshore pipeline natech events amounts to 650 million USD (in 2012 USD).
In contrast to the U.S., the data collection process for Europe was severely hampered by the lack of publicly available pipeline incident information. Generally, for Europe only overview data could be found, whose level of detail was not sufficient to allow an in-depth analysis of incident causes, dynamics and consequences. It would be desirable that information on pipeline incidents and their consequences be collected at a central level in Europe and made available for lessons-learning research. Using the limited European data available, the analysis results show that landslides and floods seem to pose the biggest threat to both oil and gas pipelines in Europe. Lightning is also a non-negligible threat with a high ignition probability in case of gas releases, as well as cold weather, which was identified as the main hazard for the French pipeline natech accident data set.
In the 12 months following this report the in-depth analysis of incident data will be continued with a view to identifying impact and failure modes and lessons learned for future accident prevention and consequence mitigation will also be identified. Based on this, recommendations for Natech scenario development in pipelines and for the formulation of prevention and mitigation measures will be prepared.
For this purpose this study focused on the collection and analysis of hazardous liquid and natural gas transmission pipeline incident data. During the study, European and U.S. incident data sources were reviewed, relevant data was collected, and imported into a specifically developed database-driven incident data analysis system. The analysis system and preliminary results of the incident data analysis were reported in the first year final report of the study. This report presents the findings of the second year of the study that focused on onshore hazardous liquid transmission pipeline natechs, with special emphasis on natural hazard impact and damage modes, incident consequences, and lessons learned for scenario building.
Due to the low number of incidents, the European incident data alone was not sufficient to identify natural-hazard specific impact and failure modes at the oil pipeline components and to develop representative natech scenarios. For this reason, data on U.S. pipeline natech incidents was included in this study. Although the dominating natural hazards vary due to geological and climatic differences, the additional use of U.S. data allowed a more complete analysis, the results of which are equally applicable to the European oil pipeline network for selected natural hazards.
The analysis of the data available for Europe showed that natechs constitute 4% of all reported oil and petroleum product pipeline incidents in Europe in the last 40 years (1971-2012). The total number of identified natechs is 20. Recent natechs are rare and there is only one pipeline natech incident since 1995. 90% of the natechs involve the pipe body, whereas the remainder involves pump stations. There are no reported natechs at intermediate storage facilities. Geological hazards were the primary trigger (65%), followed by hydrological (20%) and climatic hazards (10%). Meteorological hazards played a minor role. The main incident initiators among geological hazards were landslides and the rest was mostly subsidence events primarily affecting elements other than the pipe body. No earthquake related natech was reported. All hydrological incidents were related to floods and no other water-related hazards such as stream scouring was observed. Although cold weather conditions are common in Europe, only hot weather related climatic natechs were reported that were relatively minor compared to other natechs.
The total amount of crude oil and petroleum products released due to natech incidents was 6,000 m³, 40% of which was subsequently recovered. The median release volume was 120 m³ and at least half of the released amount was recovered in 75% of the incidents. The total estimated cost of the natech incidents at oil and petroleum product pipelines in Europe as corrected for inflation is about 40 million Euro. The highest cost for a single event is 14.4 million Euro while the median cost is 0.8 million Euro.
The analysis of the U.S. Department of Transportation hazardous liquid transmission pipeline incident data for a period of 25 years (1986-2012) showed that there were 387 natechs corresponding to about 5.5% of all pipeline incidents. The vulnerability of pipeline network components varies significantly with natural hazard and system types. Unlike in Europe, meteorological hazards were the main trigger, resulting in the highest number of incidents (40%) and the highest total cost (60%). Geological and climatic hazards were other major hazards with about 20% contribution each. However, climatic natechs resulted in less than 10% of the total release and the corresponding total cost was even more insignificant (2%). While hydrological hazard triggered incidents occurred less
frequently, their consequences were significant and correspond to one third of the total release and overall cost.
The analysis also showed that the susceptibility to natural hazards is not uniform among the different hazardous liquid pipeline network parts (e.g. pipe run, pumping/metering stations, and intermediate tank farms/terminals). All incidents related to hydrological hazards involved the main pipeline body; the same holds for incidents caused by geological hazards with more than 75%. However, in case of meteorological and climatic natechs, the distribution shifts towards incidents involving aboveground storage tanks. About 50% of meteorological and 40% of climatic natechs occurred at such tanks, followed by pumping and metering stations with more than 20%. The total amount of hazardous substance released due to the natech incidents was about 50,875 m³ (320,000 barrels) resulting in 590 million USD economic damage.
The overall analysis showed that:
• There is a tendency to underreport natural hazards as causes of incidents.
• Although they occur less frequently, the consequences of natechs can be comparatively more significant than for other pipeline incidents.
• The natural hazard damage susceptibility of pipeline systems differs with system type.
• Natural hazards do not impact all pipeline system parts equally and some parts are more and even sometimes only susceptible to selected types of natural hazards.
• Impact mechanisms at pipeline system parts other than the pipe run are not specific to pipelines and are similar to their counterparts at fixed industrial plants.
• Earthquakes are perceived to be a major threat to pipelines but historical data shows that they have not or very rarely triggered natech incidents in hazardous liquid transmission pipelines.
• Besides directly triggering incidents, natural hazards can also aggravate other incidents by accelerating causes, facilitating transport of spilled substances, or hampering response and recovery operations.
• Slow onset hazards and the variation in time of some natural hazards should be considered during the design and operation of pipeline systems, which typically have a very long operational life.
• Regulatory measures for the construction and operation of pipeline systems that consider possible time-varying natural hazard risks and impose comprehensive reporting obligations are necessary for the proper prevention and mitigation of pipeline natechs.
• Detailed incident and natural hazard data should be made available for the proper analysis of pipeline natech incidents, especially for regional or global studies.
• Besides data availability, data quality and explicit data limitations are equally important and should be carefully evaluated during the analysis.
• Pipeline operators should periodically update and complete incident reports if previously unknown or more accurate information becomes available, and competent authorities should encourage and actively follow this process.
• In order to support the lessons learning process, operators should be encouraged to also share information on near misses or incidents below the reporting threshold.
For this study, a database-driven incident data analysis system was developed to rapidly review, categorise, and query incident records according to their causes and consequences, and link them to related supplementary data. The system provides an automated pre-selection of incidents of potential interest using data mining methods. This can be supplemented by an expert review for manual confirmation of data accuracy, which can be carried out by multiple experts simultaneously. Using this analysis system, about 1,400 fully reviewed and categorised oil and natural gas transmission pipeline natech records were identified from the European and U.S. incident data. Similarly, approximately 2,150 natural gas distribution incidents were also identified as possible natechs and are ready for more detailed peer-review. In addition to onshore incidents, all data sets include offshore incidents, as well. Therefore, the occurrence mechanisms and consequences of offshore pipeline natechs can be studied. As a by-product of the data collection process, the database furthermore includes over 800,000 U.S. National Response Centre incident reports from all causes in industrial and transportation activities, which are automatically classified in the same way as the pipeline incident records. The database is available for future studies and is especially useful for providing case-specific natech data, which is scarce in the scientific literature and in the existing accident databases.
Among natural events, storms can seriously affect the integrity of an industrial installation and lead to accident scenarios such as fires, explosions and the dispersion of chemicals in the environment. In addition, scientists expect an overall worsening of extreme weather events in this century due to climate change, which will further increase the threat to industrial facilities.
This report analyses past technological accidents with hazardous materials releases and damage to industrial facilities caused by the impact of storms. It discusses the vulnerability of industrial sites including that of the main equipment types present at the facility and analyses how they are damaged.
The first part of the report describes the storm hazard. It discusses storm types and their occurrence, as well as the main effects that cause damage to human settlements and the environment. The report lists strong winds, heavy precipitation, lightning and storm surge as the main effects responsible for damage to industrial installations.
In the second part of the report, we perform an analysis of past storm-triggered Natech events. Using different sources of public information on technological incidents, this study:
1. Analyses incident statistics;
2. Reviews a number of “landmark” accidents;
3. Discusses the lessons learned.
From the analysis of past events, the report concludes that Natech events caused by storms are frequent and that their relative occurrence is increasing compared to the overall occurrence of technological incidents from other causes in the analysed databases. The largest losses were generally triggered by heavy rain and flooding, while the most frequent trigger was lightning. The study also highlighted the role of a loss of power supply in triggering an accident or hampering the mitigation of its consequences.
The study presents lessons learned from the forensic analysis of past events and puts forward recommendations for future risk reduction for all storm effects. The most important lesson is that storm predictions based on past events are not sufficient to be well prepared for future events, in particular in the face of climate change.
A recent analysis on past accidents in pipeline networks in Europe and the USA highlighted the importance of natural hazards as accident causal factors both in oil and gas pipeline systems. This analysis also flagged associated safety and supply-security concerns. Prevention and preparedness are therefore key to preventing casualties, pollution, supply-chain effects, and economic losses due to damage, business interruption and clean-up costs.
The present study extended the risk assessment capability of the JRC's RAPID-N framework for rapid natech risk assessment and mapping by integrating a new functionality for assessing the risks of earthquake impacts on oil transport pipelines. With this, the JRC provides a tool to industry and authorities that contributes towards the identification of natech risk hotspots and pipeline system weaknesses with respect to external accident triggers, and it allows an estimation of the potential consequences of such impacts.
This report briefly recapitulates the main results of the pipeline natech accident analysis, introduces the main features of RAPID-N, discusses the methodologies selected for assessing the risk of damage and failure in oil transport pipelines due to earthquake impact, and then describes the modifications made to RAPID-N to implement these methodologies. As a final step, the implementation of this new assessment feature is demonstrated through a case study application with RAPID-N.
In response to calls by governments for a decision-support tool for the management of Natech risks, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission developed the Rapid Natech Risk Assessment and Mapping Tool (RAPID-N) which is a system for the analysis and mapping of Natech accident risks. The primary aim of the application is rapid local or regional Natech risk analysis with minimum data requirements. Initially, RAPID-N was focused on the impact of earthquakes on fixed hazardous industrial installations but in time it has been extended to cover Natech risks at hazardous liquid transmission pipelines, and currently support for flood hazards is under development.
For credible flood Natech risk assessment, RAPID-N requires accurate on-site flood hazard intensity data, which is difficult to obtain due to the vast amount of data required for the analysis and the complexity of the computations needed to be performed. One data source for this data is the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), which has also been developed by the JRC in close collaboration with the EU Member States. EFAS provides probabilistic flood forecasting information to national authorities within Europe, as well as to the ERCC as early as 10 days before a flood event.
This study explored how RAPID-N and EFAS can benefit from each other’s capabilities by exchanging and making use of valuable information produced by each system. For RAPID-N, flood forecasts published by EFAS can provide on-site natural hazard data required for damage estimations. For EFAS, the results of flood Natech risk analyses with RAPID-N that are based on EFAS forecasts can be useful to enrich the reports and alerts provided to the end users. In order to study the feasibility of collaboration between the two systems, means of interoperability were analysed in this study. Benefits of cooperation between the systems were evaluated and possible methods for data and information sharing are discussed by highlighting advantages and disadvantages of different methods.
The study shows that EFAS can provide overall flood information and flood-related on-site hazard parameters (e.g. water depths) for floods in the near future as forecast by the system, whereas RAPID-N can analyse flood Natech risks and provide information about critical industrial infrastructures (e.g. hazardous facilities, pipelines) in the estimated flood area. Providing means of interoperability between EFAS and RAPID-N can also support a flood Natech alerting functionality for competent authorities and emergency responders. Various methods of interoperability of the two systems are theoretically possible but not all of them are found to be practicable or feasible due to data confidentiality issues. The most appropriate method is found to be publication of feeds for updates in flood forecasts and flood risk assessments and providing standard web services for requesting, aggregating, and sharing related data. The proposed methodology also allows interoperability with other systems.
[The rest of the abstract is confidential]
This study explored how two natural-hazard related decision support systems developed by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), namely the Global Disaster Alert Coordination System (GDACS) which provides natural disaster alerts and the Rapid Natech Risk Assessment and Mapping System (RAPID-N) which provides comprehensive Natech risk analyses, can benefit from each other’s capabilities enhance the scope and value of their services. For this purpose, the architectures, data exchange mechanisms and analysis capabilities of both systems were studied in detail. Possible means of information sharing were assessed and the feasibility of collaboration between the systems was evaluated.
The study showed that RAPID-N can analyse Natech-related damage and consequences by using the natural hazard data from GDACS and provide information about hazardous industrial establishments in the area affected by the natural disaster. GDACS can benefit from this information to enrich disaster alerts that it sends to a wide range of end users, which currently lack such information. Alert scores can also be modified according to the Natech risks, especially if high-impact hazardous consequences are expected. A feasible method of interoperability between the systems is found to be the use of the GDACS task scheduler to push natural hazard data to RAPID-N to initiate industry-related analysis, followed by generation of the analysis outputs in a standard XML-based format by RAPID-N, and processing of these outputs by GDACS to include available information into the disaster alerts. Both GDACS and RAPID-N already have the components needed for such an integration. In fact, GDACS utilizes a similar mechanism internally for the computation of natural hazard impacts for different hazards through its sub-systems. The same methodology can also be used by both systems for interoperability with other systems.
The current report aims to provide scientific support to the UCPM participant countries in their development of NRA, explaining why and how a risk assessment could be carried out, how the results of this could be used for Disaster Risk Management planning and in general, how science can help civil protection authorities and staff from ministries and agencies engaged in NRA activities. The report is the result of the collaborative effort of the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre team and nine Joint Research Centre expert groups which provided their insight on tools and methods for specific risk assessment related to certain hazards and assets: drought, earthquakes, floods, terrorist attacks, biological disasters, critical infrastructures, chemical accidents, nuclear accidents and Natech accidents.
The chapter on Natech accidents (Chapter 16) describes the context of Natech risk assessment within the National Risk Assessment process. Natech-specific aspects in risk identification, risk analysis and risk evaluation phases of the risk assessment are discussed in detail. Good practices for Natech risk assessment are provided and existing gaps and challenges for effective Natech risk assessment are indicated.
This edition of GAR is the first punctuation mark in the implementation of the Sendai Framework. It offers an update on progress made in implementing the outcome, goal, targets and priorities of the Sendai Framework and disaster-related Sustainable Development Goals. It provides an analysis of how risk science is changing, presents areas for additional endeavour, and explores aspects of understanding and managing systemic risk. It presents innovative research and practice for pursuing risk-informed sustainable development, and provides an introduction to the wider scope and nature of hazards and related risks to be considered.
Chapter 3 of the report on "risk" investigates how we currently monitor and model a range of hazards, including tsunamis, landslides, floods and fires. Other hazards are less familiar as they were not part of the Hyogo Framework for Action. However, they are part of the Sendai Framework and include: biological, nuclear/radiological, chemical/industrial, NATECH (natural hazards triggering technological disasters) and environmental hazards. Chapter 3 looks at our understanding of how these hazards interact with exposure and vulnerability.
Chapter 3.1.9 on "Natech" describes Natech events which are a recurring but often overlooked fature in many disaster situations. Besides providing examples of important Natech accidents that occurred in the past, the characteristics of Natech risk are discussed. Information on Natech risk drivers and instruments for effective Natech risk management are explained, together with how progress in Natech risk reduction can be measured.
The present Guidelines are the result of the collaboration between over 100 leading experts from national authorities, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, academia, think tanks and private-sector entities. They focus on Sendai Framework’s first Priority for Action: Understanding Disaster Risk, which is the basis for all measures on disaster risk reduction and is closely linked to the other three Priorities for Action.
"Natech Hazard and Risk Assessment" section in Part 3 of the Guidelines covers in-depth information on conducting risk assessment for Natech hazards.