The role of 3D-CFD simulation in optimizing pre-emergency responses

Abstract

Consequences of an incident resulted from the release of hazards shall be mitigated to limit the undesirable effects. Emergency preparedness and response should address the duration and severity of the events and also prevent escalation. Therefore, emergency response plans are prepared, along with other related procedures, which are commonly called as preemergency responses. These plans or procedures are quick guidance used by the response team to handle emergency cases especially when it deals with critical equipment or condition. Each plan or case must involve related protection equipment available on site along with sequence for emergency command and hazard analysis.Common analysis provides only the highest magnitude of case or event (worst case scenario), therefore,this information could drive sequential preventive/mitigative actions which require significantly huge company resources to be deployed. To improve efficiency and effectiveness of this strategy, a review of consequence analysis using computational fluid dynamics approach is proposed. Several advantages of using this method are high quality presentation and visualization of phenomenon, ability to provide result monitoring over the period of time, and capacity to use several parameters on the analysis which were not available using the standard approach. Furthermore, this approach can enrich the information contained on the plans/procedures and enhance the quality of the plan representation to match with the actual scenarios. Hence by upgrading this pre-emergency response plans and procedures, it is expected that the emergency preparedness measures will be more comprehensively assessed and ready to provide best and optimum responses in emergencies.