Comparison study on human health and safety loss for rural and urban areas in monetary value subjected to gas pipeline failure

Abstract

Consequence assessment is an integral part of the risk assessment process carried out by the industry to minimize impact of assets failure on the environment, human safety, assets integrity and business reputation. A few components of consequences loss occur due to the pipeline failure, such as asset loss, environmental loss, production loss, public loss and Human Health and Safety Loss (HHSL). This study focuses on HHSL by considering the losses in term of monetary value between rural and urban areas due to pipeline failure. Based on the current technical standard practiced in the industry, the calculated consequences are speculated to generate an equal risk value to any area of the pipeline throughout the country, regardless of the areas unique local factors and consequences. Hence, this would lead to the deterioration in the quality of the estimated risk. As for the damaged area, Areal Locations of Hazardous Atmospheres (ALOHA) software was employed in the calculation of risk by considering the pipeline data and the details of selected sites such as atmospheric and demographic condition. The HHSL was calculated using a developed mathematical equation of quantitative risk assessment in terms of the number of fatalities or injuries or both in monetary value. The results of the assessments from rural and urban areas were then compared with one another to identify the occurrence of any significant dissimilarity. The major finding of this research showed that there is a possibility to enhance the decisive value of risk by implementing the proposed approach of HHSL estimation for consequence assessment.