Area impact analysis of chemical installations and critical installations identification.

Identifying critical installations in an area containing many chemical installations is important for the safety management of the chemical area. In this study, the area impact degree of chemical installations is defined, which is determined by analyzing the probability of accidents at other installations in the area when an accident occurs at a given installation, and the losses caused by each installation in the event of corresponding accident. Critical installations for area safety can be easily identified by comparing the area impact degree of different installations in the area. An illustrative example demonstrates the proposed approach. Analysis of the area impact degree of 6 tanks in a storage area and identification of more important installations for the safety of the entire area illustrate the applicability of this approach. Furthermore, our novel area importance analyzing approach is also compared with the graph approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]