Societal Risk Criteria And Pipelines

By Joan M. Schork, Elizabeth M. Lutostansky and Steven R. Auvil, Air Products,

Allentown, PA | October 2012, Vol. 239 No. 10

Figure 1: Risk Criteria Established by the Dutch Government.

While the discussion of societal risk criteria for the process industry began in the 1970s led primarily by the Dutch and British governments - the literature on the societal risk of
hazardous goods transportation, particularly by pipeline, has been much more limited.
For fixed facilities, F-N curves and individual risk calculations are broadly used to assess
the risk to the general public.
Various governments have established tolerable risk limits based on these analysis
methods. Many corporations have also adopted these methods for internal evaluation of the
relative risk of projects, plants and businesses, presumably setting their own criteria.
F-N and individual risk analyses have also been applied to pipelines, generally with F
calculated on a per-length-of-pipeline basis. Such an analysis is useful for comparing the
risk of hazardous goods transport via pipeline to that of another mode of transport. Given a
tolerable risk limit on a per length basis, a determination of the appropriate level of risk
mitigation can also be made. Such an analysis does not, however, provide any indication of
the overall level of risk of the pipeline or allow the risk of a pipeline network to be
compared to that of other business ventures. It is useful to compare pipeline to fixed facility
risk so that risk reduction resources can be appropriately allocated. [1]
Background
The Dutch government began risk quantification after 1953 floods that claimed the lives of
2,000 people. Following the floods, the Netherlands established a criterion of 10-6

probability of fatality/year for the sea dike systems. This criterion was the precursor to the
Dutch individual risk criteria [2].
The 10-6 fatality/year individual risk criterion is based on 1% of the natural death risk for
10 to 14 year-olds in the Netherlands. The purpose of the individual risk criteria is to ensure
that the risk to an individual from a facility handling dangerous goods is only a small
component of the overall average risk of death. Safety zoning distances based on individual
risk have been established in the Netherlands to ensure adequate separation between
hazardous materials and populations. The same individual risk criterion is applied for
stationary activities and the transport of hazardous materials.
The criteria for tolerable risk adopted by the Dutch government are shown in Figure 1.
The solid line represents a limit of fatalities/year for fixed facilities. Risk above this line is
considered to be intolerable. Below this line, the ALARP (As Low As Reasonably
Practicable) principle is applied to reduce risk. In the 1990s, the Dutch Parliament made the
societal risk criteria non-mandatory. Local permitting agencies were given the
responsibility to maintain risks below the maximum tolerable level, but the criteria could be
waived when justified [3].
In 1996, the Dutch established criteria for the transport of hazardous materials [4]. The
societal risk line is one order of magnitude higher in frequency and is applied to a kilometer
of the transport route. The transportation criteria line, shown in Figure 1, is applied to road,
rail, water, and pipeline transport.
For pipelines, societal risk is calculated for the worst-case kilometer of the pipeline route
per municipality. When the length of the pipeline is less than 1 kilometer, the societal risk
for the whole pipeline is determined. The worst-case kilometer is assessed by an evaluation
of the consequence area and the surrounding population density.
In the United Kingdom, the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers (IGEM, formally
IGE) developed a methodology for the assessment of natural gas pipelines [5]. This
methodology was largely adopted by the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in the BSI
Code of Practice for pipelines carrying any flammable [6]. The IGEM Communication and
the BSI Code of Practice both recommend the use of individual risk and societal risk in the
assessment of pipelines.
The BSI quotes the following HSE established individual risk criteria for setting land use
planning zones for hazards sites, including pipelines carrying flammables:
<10-6 broadly acceptable.
10-6 to 10-4 tolerable if ALARP is applied.
>10-4 unacceptable for the public.
The HSE established the societal risk criteria shown in Figure 2 for fixed facilities as part
of the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) regulation. The BSI applies the same
criteria to pipelines with F in fatalities/year/km. The 1 km basis was chosen because 1 km
was judged to expose the public to the same level of risk as a typical medium-size COMAH
site.

Figure 2:- Risk Criteria Established by British Government.

IGEM chose to plot F-N data for the existing UK natural gas pipeline network on a per mile
basis. They then drew a curve above all existing data and established this curve as a
broadly acceptable limit for natural gas lines on the basis that the existing network was
accepted as tolerable by society [7]. The resulting curve lies very close to the lower line in
Figure 2 when scaled to a 1 km basis.
When a pipeline is of a single construction and the nearby population can be assumed to be
of a single density, a generic evaluation can be made. In this case, the risk at any point
along the line is the same. The f,n pairs for such a line are summed over a km or mile and
the resulting curve compared to the appropriate length scaled F-N criteria.
The BSI and IGEM documents also describe how a site specific assessment can be made
for a given community or development. The first step is to calculate an interaction length
defined as the length of the pipeline through the community plus two times the impact
radius for the most severe pipeline event. An event occurring anywhere along the
interaction length could affect the population within the community, so, f,n pairs along the
interaction length are summed. The resulting F-N curve is normalized to per km (mile) by
dividing the calculated F by the interaction length.
Purpose Of Risk Criteria
As discussed in the CCPS Guide for Developing Quantitative Safety Risk Criteria, the
selection of appropriate criteria depends upon the objective of the analysis [8].
Governments set limits to protect their citizens. Corporations need to compare alternatives
and assess investment opportunities. When evaluating a pipeline, a company may wish to:
compare hazardous goods transport by pipeline to other transportation modes; compare
alternative pipeline routes; establish appropriate pipeline specifications and safeguards,
including making a comparison of the effectiveness of various mitigations; or compare the
overall risk of a pipeline to other business ventures.
Basis For F-N Calculations
The Dutch and British governments have chosen to establish F-N criteria for a given length
of pipe. While the TNO and BSI methods both use one km as the reference pipe length,

they differ in how the criteria are used. TNO recommends evaluating the worst-case km
within a metropolitan area while BSI recommends summing the f,n pairs over the entire
length through a community and then normalizing to 1 km.
The BSI method has two drawbacks. First, it is often difficult to identify distinct population
clusters along a pipeline in order to define a community. Secondly, normalizing F averages
the risk over the interaction length. In this way, information is lost and high risk segments
of the pipeline could be missed. To illustrate this point, consider a hypothetical 6-km
interaction length of pipeline with a constant frequency of each failure scenario. The F-N
curves for the individual 1 km segments would be represented by the dashed curves in
Figure 3. Clearly, some of these hypothetical curves fall above the criterion line, indicating
a higher societal risk within those 1 km segments.

Figure 3: Hypothetical Risk Curves for 1 km Segments.

If the f,n pairs are summed over the entire interaction length and then normalized to 1 km
as per the BSI methodology, the risk of the entire length of pipeline is judged to be tolerable
as shown in Figure 4. This example is based on 6 km for simplicity. The averaging effect
could be more pronounced with longer interaction lengths. The CCPS Guideline on
Chemical Transportation Risk Analysis suggests 10 -20 miles (16-32 km) as an appropriate
length for evaluating risks to a community. [1]

Figure 4: Hypothetical Risk Curve Normalized over the Interaction Length.

Selection Of F-N Criteria
If one chooses to establish criteria on a length basis, the question then arises as to the
appropriate segment length. If one wishes to establish a benchmark against which to
compare future pipelines as IGEM did, criteria can be established on any convenient length
basis. To compare a pipeline project to other investments, a segment length equivalent to
a fixed facility must be selected. Fixed facility criteria can then be applied to the chosen
length of pipeline. The basis for this equivalence could be an impact area as suggested by
the BSI, a definition of a typical community, or some measure of project size such as
capital invested or income generated.
Individual and/or societal risk can be used to set pipeline specifications, including
safeguards. The most conservative application of individual risk calls for specification of
the pipeline such that the chosen individual risk criterion is met even at a minimal distance
from the pipeline such as the edge of the easement. The advantage of this approach is that it
ensures a low event frequency and increases the likelihood that the risk from potential
population encroachment is tolerable.
Conclusions
The selection of analysis method and risk criteria depends on the objective of the risk
evaluation. Options for pipeline reviews are summarized in Table 1. If a length-scaled F-N
analysis is chosen, care must be taken not to miss identifying high risk sections by
summing the F over too long a length of pipeline. To avoid this, the F-N curves of
individual segments can be plotted and compared to F-N criteria scaled to the segment
length.
Table 1: Risk Evaluation Options.

Acknowledgement
This article is based on a presentation at the AIChE 8th Global Congress on Process Safety,
Houston, April 1-4, 2012.
The authors
Joan M. Schork, Ph.D., is the Global Functional Lead for Process Safety at Air Products.
In her 24 years with the company, she has held a variety of technical and management
positions in research, engineering and operations. She can be reached at 610-481-4014.
Elizabeth M. Lutostansky, Ph.D,, is a lead process safety engineer. She leads the risk and
consequence modeling at Air Products.
Steven R. Auvil, Ph.D., is an Air Products Fellow. He leads the Chief Engineers Office
and is accountable for the identification and management of the technical risks associated
with the introduction of new technologies.
References
[1] Center for Chemical Process Safety (1995). Guidelines for Chemical Transportation
Risk Analysis, Center for Chemical Process Safety/AIChE.
[2] VROM. Guidelines for quantitative risk assessment. Purple book CPR18E (2005).
[3] Voogd, 2004: Disaster Prevention in Urban Environments, Voogd, Henk,
European Journal of Spatial Development, no. 12, Sept. 2004.
[4] Bottelberghs, P.H., Risk Analysis and Safety Policy Developments in the Netherlands,
Journal of Hazardous Materials, 71(2000) 59-84.
[5] Application of pipeline risk assessment to proposed developments in the vicinity of
high pressure Natural Gas pipelines, IGEM/TD/2 Communication 1737
[6] Code of Practice for Pipelines,- Part 2: Steel pipelines on land - Guide to the
application of pipeline risk assessment to proposed developments in the vicinity of major
accident hazard pipelines containing flammables, PD 8010-3:2009
[7] Steel Pipelines for High Pressure Gas Transmission, IGE/TD/1Ed 4, 2001.
[8] Center for Chemical Process Safety (2009). Guidelines for Developing Quantitative
Safety Risk Criteria. Center for Chemical Process Safety/AIChE.