Wildfires, exacerbated by climate change and global temperature rising, increasingly threaten human settlements and industrial facilities near wildlands. Wildland-industrial interfaces face heightened risks due to hazardous materials, where equipment failure can lead to cascading events. Current mitigation strategies, such as clearance areas, may be insufficient, as recent studies highlight inadequacies in prescribed safety distances for preventing wildfire-induced Natech events. This study presents a novel quantitative methodology for assessing the risk of industrial sites exposed to wildfires including safety systems in the evaluation. By integrating the dynamic nature of wildfires, the methodology captures primary Natech events and cascading scenarios through dynamic event trees, accounting for multiple ignition sources and temporal variability. It incorporates safety systems into the evaluation to better address the risk posed by wildfires for process industries. A case study demonstrates the application of the methodology and addresses the risk reduction effects thanks to the presence of safety systems. This approach fills a crucial gap in the evaluation of wildfire-induced Natech scenarios, offering a systematic tool for a more realistic quantification of risk.
Ricci et al. (Wed,) studied this question.