Risk Estimation

Two distinct categories of Risies

• Voluntary Risks
• e.g. driving or riding in an automobile, and
working in an industrial facility.
• Involuntary Risks
• e.g. exposure to lighting, disease, typhoons
and persons in residential or recreational
areas near the industrial facilities.
 Examples of risks associated with activities
Voluntary Involuntary
Risk fatalities Risk fatalities
(death) per (death) per
Activity person per yr Activity person per yr
(x106) (x106)
Smoking (20 5000 Influenza 200
cigarettes/day) Leukemia 80
Motor cycling 2000 Run over by road 60
Car racing 1200 vehicle (UK)
Car driving 170 Run over by road 50
Rock climbing 40 vehicle (USA)
Football 20 Floods (USA) 2.2
Storms (USA) 0.8
Lightning (USA) 0.1
Falling aircraft 0.1
(USA)
Falling aircraft 0.02
(UK)
 Individual Risk

• Individual risk is defined formally (by Institution of

Chemical Engineering, UK) as the frequency at which
an individual may be expected to sustain a given
level of harm from the realization of specified
hazards. It is usually taken to be the risk of death,
and usually expressed as a risk per year.
• The term ‘individual’ may be a member of a certain
group of workers on a facility, or a member of the
public, or anything as defined by the QRA.
 Location Specific Individual Risk
IRx ,y ,i  pi fi
• IRx,y,i is the individual risk at location (x,y) due to event i,
• pi is the probability of fatality due to incident i at location
(x,y). This is normally determined by FTA
• fi is the frequency of incident outcome case i, (per year). This
value can be determined using Probit Analysis
When there are more than one release events, the
cumulative risk at location (x,y) is given by equation
n
IRx ,y   IRx ,y ,i
i 1
 Average Individual Risk /
Individual Risk Per Annum
• The average individual risk is the average of all individual risk estimates over a defined or exposed
population. This is useful for example in estimating the average risk of workers in reference with
existing population. Average individual risk over exposed population is given by CCPS (1989) as


x y
,
IRx y Px y
, ,

IRAV 

x y
,
Px y ,

Here, IRAV is the average individual risk in the exposed population

(probability of fatality per year) and P x, y is the number of people at
location x, y
Example: LSIR for Ship Explosion at a
Proposed Port

1 x 10-5

1 x 10-6
 Societal Risk
• Societal risk measures the risk to a group of people. It is an estimation of risk in
term of both the potential size and likelihood of incidents with multiple
consequences.
• The risk can be represented by Frequency-Number (F-N) Curve.
 Determination of Societal Risk
• To calculate the number of fatalities resulting from each
incident outcome case, the following equation is used:
Ni   Px ,y pf ,i
x ,y

Here, Ni is number of fatalities resulting from Incident

Outcome case i, pf,i is the probability of fatality and Px,y is the
number of population.
• The cumulative frequency is then calculated using the
following equation:
FN   Fi
i
Here, FN is the frequency of all incident outcome cases affecting N or more
people, per year and Fi= is the frequency of incident outcome case i per
year.
Example: The corresponding Societal
Risk
1x10-3

Intolerable
1x10-4 Region

1x10-5
ALARP
Region
1x10-6
Broadly Acceptable
Region
1x10-7
1 10 100 1000 10000
Fatalities (N)
Risk Tolerability
and
ALARP Concept
In life, there is always some risks…
• There is no such thing as zero risk
• All activities involve some risks
• The issue is at level should we tolerate
these risks…
 Tolerable Risk
• Risk cannot be eliminated entirely.
• Every chemical process has a certain amount of risk
associated with it.
• At some point in the design stage someone needs to
decide if the risks are “tolerable".
• Each country has it owns tolerability criteria.
• One tolerability criteria in the UK is "as low as
reasonable practicable" (ALARP) concept formalized
in 1974 by United Kingdom Health and Safety at Work
Act.
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 ALARP Criteria
INTOLERABLE LEVEL
(Risk cannot be justified
on any ground)

TOLERABLE only if risk reduction

is impracticable or if its cost is
grossly disproportionate to the
THE ALARP REGION improvement gained
(Risk is undertaken if benefited
is desired)
TOLERABLE if cost of reduction
would exceed the improvement
gained

BROADLY
ACCEPTABLE
REGION

Page 14
 Tolerability Criteria in Malaysia
• LSIR is used as a measure of individual risk
– This means that the risk is not influenced by
population
• The Upper limits for LSIR are as follows
– For residential receptors : 1 X 10-6 fatality per year
– For industrial receptors : 1 X 10-5 fatality per year
– For workers on site: Voluntary risk (1 X 10-3 fatality
per year). This is considered maximum in UK for
offshore industry.
 Tolerability Criteria (UK)
• This framework is represented as a three-tier system as
shown in figure. It consists of several elements :
(1) Upper-bound on individual (and possibly, societal) risk
levels, beyond which risks unacceptable. In UK, the
guideline and criteria are spelled out in R2P2 (reducing Risk
Protecting People) document. (refer to www. hse.gov.uk)
(2) Lower-bound on individual (and possibly, societal) risk
levels, below which risks are deemed not to warrant
regulatory concern.
(3) intermediate region between (1) and (2) above, where
further individual and societal risk reductions are required
to achieve a level deemed "as low as reasonably practicable
(ALARP)".

Page 16
Tolerability Criteria (UK)

Dotted line –
general public

Solid line - workers

Tolerability criteria (Netherland)

1. Risk to public cannot be

more than 1X 10-6 fpy
2. Fatality cannot be more
than 10 at risk 1X 10-5 fpy
3. Slope -2

General public only

Tolerability Criteria (Australia)
 Tolerability Criteria (Canada)

Major industrial accident council of Canada (MIACC)

recommends the above Individual risks level