Historical overview of facility siting

Facility siting methods to optimize the layout of industrial facilities for risk reduction have been evolving for decades from subjective views, standards, and guidelines to quantitative numerical analysis. The authors of this paper have tossed out the past, moved beyond the present, and taken out their crystal balls to provide a discussion around the future of facility siting by focusing on technology driven enhancements associated with three main themes: mainstreaming of current advanced analysis techniques into the base case methodology, incorporating company and/or site specific data trending and analytics to operationalize the studies, and the potential transformational change to machine learning‐based predictive risk management. With technological advancements touching nearly every area of business, it is no surprise that it is also changing the landscape of consequence and risk‐based facility siting approaches. As with all markets, the customer will be a key driver for the advancements of technical safety studies to suit their adapting needs. However, as this article will show, personnel conducting facility siting studies are also using technological advancements to challenge the status quo by improving data fidelity, increasing the robustness and depth of analysis, and providing improved insights to aid decision making.

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A vision of facility siting possibilities

Vilas

Hereña

Shah

2020

Process Safety Progress

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Current state of the practice for facility siting studies

Mander

Sarrack

Diakow

et al. 2020

Process Safety Progress

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Facilities that handle hazardous materials above threshold quantities are required to assess the impacts due to postulated accidents involving releases of these materials, and to ensure that people are adequately protected from the associated fire, explosion, and toxic hazards. An analysis of these hazards can be based solely on consequences from maximum credible events or can incorporate the likelihood of the events to characterize results in terms of risk. The methods of performing these analyses may vary, but, regardless of the specific techniques used, fundamental principles of thoroughness and defensibility should be achieved. This study describes best practices and basic requirements for consequence‐based and risk‐based facility siting studies (FSSs), also commonly referred to as quantitative risk analyses, consistent with industry guidance. The fundamental objective of a consequence‐based or risk‐based FSS is to ensure that the consequences or risks posed by facility operations are minimized to the extent practical.

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Facility siting ‐ negotiating the minefield of “maximum credible event”

Graham

Thomas

2021

Process Safety Progress

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The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study that compares the results from a consequence-based facility siting study (FSS) limited to a specified release size as the maximum credible event (MCE) versus a risk-based study with a range of release sizes and associated frequencies. The results are intended to highlight potential differences in the building siting decisions made using a consequencebased approach with a limited MCE versus those made with a risk-based approach. Most recommended practices and other FSS guidance documents advise evaluating MCEs for an FSS. However, there can be uncertainty in MCE selection and the values used in industry span a considerable range. Arguments for limiting the MCE in a consequence-based FSS to a 2-in. release include that most accidental releases (i.e., > 95%) are smaller and that a 2-in. release size is the largest that provides actionable information upon which siting decisions can be made. However, a number of well-known incidents in industry involve releases larger than 2-in., which introduces uncertainty as to a reasonable upper-bound for an MCE. The use of a risk-based FSS approach effectively eliminates the decision regarding release size since this approach aggregates the full range of operational scenarios and release sizes along with the associated likelihood of failure.Based on the MCE scenario(s) employed and the criteria selected, consequencebased and risk-based FSS evaluations for a given site may lead to very different conclusions as to which buildings are considered safe and what types of mitigation actions should be taken.

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Historical overview of facility siting

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

A vision of facility siting possibilities

A vision of facility siting possibilities

Current state of the practice for facility siting studies

Facility siting ‐ negotiating the minefield of “maximum credible event”

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