Understanding Natech Risk Due to Storms - Analysis, Lessons Learned and Recommendations

Abstract

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. \nAmong 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.\nThis 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.\nThe 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.\nIn 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:\n1. Analyses incident statistics;\n2. Reviews a number of “landmark” accidents;\n3. Discusses the lessons learned.\nFrom 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.\nThe 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.

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