ABSTRACT Interaction of natural and technological hazards (NaTech) events, such as tsunamis and earthquakes, can affect industrial facilities such as those featuring anchored atmospheric storage tanks. Consequences of natural events on this kind of installation may include the release of hazardous substances, which in turn can lead to industrial accidents, including fires, explosions and pollution. The study discusses the results of a methodology for quantitative risk assessment of oil storage facilities considering a hypothetical one, located in Sicily (southern Italy), exposed to earthquakes and tsunamis. Using a seismic source model for the greater Mediterranean area, probabilistic hazard analyses for earthquake ground shaking and tsunamic inundation were conducted. Storage tank vulnerability, in terms of loss of containment, was modelled via fragility curves conditional to hazard intensity and tank filling level. The structural failure risk metrics are the annual rate of failures due to tsunamis and/or earthquakes, considering interactions of the two hazards. The structural failure rates served as an input for the analysis of industrial consequences, in terms of fires, vapor cloud explosions, and toxic releases. The risk is finally expressed by means of local personal risk in the plant area and group risk curves. The study provides and applies a performance‐based engineering framework for NaTech risk analysis in the case of earthquake‐tsunami compound hazards. The results of the specific application show that the seismic hazard dominates the risk, which is, however, appreciably increased by the natural hazards with respect to the base (industrial accident) case.
Baltzopoulos et al. (Sun,) studied this question.