This is a past event
by Professor Valerio Cozzani, University of Bologna, Italy
In recent years, an increasing concern raised among the protection of population, environment and assets from external hazard factors. For 30+ years, safety research and safety assessment of conventional industrial facilities, as those of the Oil&Gas and chemical industry, primarily addressed the issue of major accidents caused by system deviations caused by internal events: component failures and/or operator errors.
The increased frequency of severe natural events as storms and floods, the increased number of facilities operating in harsh environments, and the changes in the global political framework, raised the interest on the prevention and protection of population and assets from major accidents caused by natural events or by intentional acts of interference.
The quantitative assessment of risk deriving from such scenarios requires the development of new and specific tools in a highly interdisciplinary framework. An approach to the problem will be presented. Equipment vulnerability models considering the impact of natural events and of improvised explosive devices were developed. The specific release scenarios that may be triggered by the impact of external events were identified and assessed. An approach to the estimation of the final consequences of such scenarios requires a specific approach, taking into account the possible failure of conventional safety barriers and the possible simultaneous impact of the triggering event on multiple equipment will be presented. The discussion will address also the approach to the assessment of cascading events resulting on the impact on the population, the interruption of lifeline services, and the disruption of community life.
About the speaker:
Valerio Cozzani is Professor and Director of academic programs in Chemical Engineering at University of Bologna, in Italy. He received a MSc in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of Pisa, in Italy. He was research fellow at the Major Accident Hazards Bureau, ISIS, EC Joint Research Centre, and Lecturer at the Faculty of Engineering of Pisa University.At University of Bologna he leads the laboratory of industrial safety and environmental sustainability, affiliated to the IChemE Safety Centre. He is in the board that manages the research centre on off-shore and marine systems engineering, and coordinates several courses for professionals in the fields of industrial safety and design of Oil&Gas facilities. He has about 20 years of research experience in the fields of risk assessment and process design, and coauthored more than 130 peer-reviewed publications.Prof. Cozzani is Associate Editor of Safety Science, member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Hazardous Materials and of the Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, chair of the ESRA Technical Committee on Chemical and Process Industry, and Italian Delegate in the EFCE Working Party on Loss Prevention in the Process Industry.
- Speaker
- Professor Valerio Cozzani
- Hosted by
- School of Engineering
- Venue
- FN185, Fraser Noble Building