How to Determine Individual Risk Due to Toxic, Fire, and Explosion Accidents in a Hydrocarbon Processing Area?

Accidents in the processing and storage of hydrocarbons can cause severe damage to people, not only within the facility but also in nearby places. In those cases, the occurrence of a major accident is considered. Moreover, there are many studies on how to determine the impact on people of these types of events. However, there is a real need to establish a methodology that integrates risk analysis techniques with other artificial intelligence ones and, in this way, to include the likelihood of the domino effect. For this reason, this research aims to determine the individual risk due to the domino effect of toxic, fire, and explosion accidents that can occur in a hydrocarbon processing area. For this purpose, a logical sequence of analysis of eight fundamental stages was made. In addition, the Bayesian and Petri networks are developed to determine the joint probability of the domino effect at different levels and the damages caused by toxicity, respectively. Finally, the individual risk is obtained, expressed using isorisk maps. As main results, these maps confirm that three deaths can occur up to 200 meters, while 250 will cause approximately four in just 10 years, values that decrease to 500 meters and are considered high according to specialized literature. Hence, this methodology is vital to quantify the possible damages of toxic accidents, fires, and explosions on people in the hydrocarbon processing industry