Modified analytic hierarchy process for risk assessment of fire and explosion accidents of external floating roof tanks

To ensure the safe operation of external floating roof (EFR) tanks, it is important to conduct risk assessments for fire and explosion accidents. In this study, we develop a modified analytic hierarchy process to overcome the subjectivity in traditional analytic hierarchy analysis, improved analytic hierarchy process, and fuzzy fault tree analysis. We propose a parameter with a correction factor: the role of the parameter in the model can be gained from further modifying the structural importance of each basic event so as to overcome the subjectivity in traditional analytic hierarchy analysis, improved analytic hierarchy process, and fuzzy fault tree analysis. The judgment matrix for the analytic hierarchy process is constructed based on the modified structural importance of each basic event in a fault tree. The weight factor for each index to the top goal, combined with the fuzzy comprehensive assessment method, is adopted to conduct risk assessments for the fire and explosion accidents of EFR tanks.