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An integrated quantitative risk analysis method

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Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 23 (2010) 428e436

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jlp

An integrated quantitative risk analysis method for natural gas pipeline network
Z.Y. Han*, W.G. Weng
Center for Public Safety Research, Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 17 November 2009
Received in revised form
2 January 2010
Accepted 18 February 2010

Natural gas industry is developing rapidly, and its accidents are threatening the urban safety. Risk
management through quantitative assessment has become an important way to improve the safety
performance of the natural gas supply system. In this paper, an integrated quantitative risk analysis method
for natural gas pipeline network is proposed. This method is composed of the probability assessment of
accidents, the analysis of consequences and the evaluation of risk. It is noteworthy that the consequences
analyzed here include those of the outside and inside gas pipelines. The analysis of consequences of the
outside pipelines focuses on the individual risk and societal risk caused by different accidents, while those of
the inside pipelines concerns about the risk of the economic loss because of the pressure re-distribution.
Risk of a sample urban gas pipeline network is analyzed to demonstrate the presented method. The results
show that this presented integrated quantitative risk analysis method for natural gas pipeline network can
be used in practical application.
Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Risk analysis
Quantitative evaluation
Natural gas pipeline
Safety management

1. Introduction
Natural gas is currently one of the most widely used sources of
energy, and its use is growing. Nowadays, natural gas covers more
than 20% of energy consumption in the European Union (Montiel,
Vilchez, & Amaldos, 1996). Transmission pipelines carrying
natural gas are not only on secure industrial sites, but also routed
across the land. In the recent years, more and more authorities have
been aware of the security problems of natural gas transmission
pipelines. Due to the physical and chemical characteristics of
natural gas as well as the features of pipelines, accidents of transmission pipelines carrying natural gas are quite different from
other industrial accidents. When the pipelines are broken, it may
cause many fatalities and domino effect, so the derived disasters
can also cause a great number of losses, including casualty and
loss of property, especially to the natural gas pipeline network.
Therefore, it's important to assess the risk of natural gas pipeline
network in order to protect the life and property.
Recently, risk analysis has already been extensively applied in
safety science, environmental science, economics, sociology, etc. It
aims at nding out the potential accidents, analysis on the causes as
well as the improvements to reduce the risk. It is important to
realize that decision-making regarding risks is not only a technical
aspect but also political, psychological and societal processes all

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 10 62796323; fax: 86 10 62792863.

E-mail address: hanzhuyang@gmail.com (Z.Y. Han).

playing important roles. Therefore, it is much important to clearly

identify the risks and check out the effects of risk reduction
measures by quantitative risk assessment (QRA) (Jonkman, van
Gelder, & Vrijling, 2003). Generally, QRA can be divided into four
phases as qualitative analysis, quantitative assessment, risk evaluation, risk control and risk reduction measures (Vrouwenvelder,
Lovegrove, & Holicky, 2001). From a technical point of view,
quantitative assessment plays an important role in the process of
risk assessment, and it constitutes the basis for evaluation of risks
to limits or standards set with an acceptable risk level.
Some QRA approaches have been applied to identify and
estimate risks to natural gas pipelines (Arnaldos, Casal, Montiel,
Sanchez-Carricondo, & Vilchez, 1998; Cagno, Caron, Mancini, &
Ruggeri, 2000; Metropolo & Brown, 2004; Jo & Ahn, 2005;
Sklavounos & Rigas, 2006; Jo & Crowl, 2008; Krueger & Smith,
2003; Suardin, McPhate, & Sipkema 2009). However, a limitation
can be observed regarding these widely used methods for
risk analysis and assessment. These existing methods have not
comprehensively analyzed various accident consequences, such as
toxicity, combustion and explosion, which have different physical
models and may cause different harms to people, and then inuence the spatial distributions of individual risk and societal risk.
Moreover, the existing methods have not taken the consequence
of the inside gas pipeline into consideration. As a matter of fact,
leakage at one node or pipeline may lead to the pressure re-distribution in the pipeline network. If the pressures of some sections in
the pipeline network are lower than the corresponding thresholds,
the gas supply deciency may interrupt industrial production and

0950-4230/$ e see front matter Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jlp.2010.02.003

Z.Y. Han, W.G. Weng / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 23 (2010) 428e436

cause economic loss. Therefore, it is necessary to take the pressure

re-distribution in the pipeline network into consideration to estimate risk for natural gas pipeline network.
Consequently, integrated risk analysis method should be
composed of the probability assessment of accidents, the analysis of
consequences and the evaluation of risk, in which the consequences
of the outside and inside natural gas pipeline network should be
under consideration. In this paper, an integrated quantitative risk
analysis method for natural gas pipeline network is proposed.
And the risk of a sample urban gas pipeline network is analyzed to
demonstrate the presented method. In the next section, this integrated quantitative risk analysis method is presented. Section 3 is
the demonstration of a sample urban gas pipe, followed by the
conclusions.

2. An integrated quantitative risk analysis method

The integrated risk analysis method proposed in this paper can
be divided into three phases, as the probability assessment, the
consequence analysis of the outside and inside pipelines, and the
risk evaluation. Fig. 1 shows the framework of this method.
Probability assessment focuses on the accident probability,
which depends on the failure assumption and may be caused by
corrosion, design defect, incorrect manipulation, or third-party
interference, etc. By using the fault tree analysis, event tree analysis, historical data or modied empirical formula, the failure rate
of the assumed failure can be calculated as the result of probability
assessment.
Consequence analysis of the outside pipelines concentrates on
the physical effects of the accidents, including toxic gas diffusion, jet
ame, re ball and UVCE (unconned vapor cloud explosion), etc.
The effects of these accidents, such as toxicity, heat, and pressure
can be quantitatively described according to the corresponding
formulas, which rely on the release rate of leakage. Based on the
doseeeffect relationship between the doses of such concrete
harmful load as toxicity, heat or pressure and such recipient categories as death or injuries, the function of the probability unit of
fatality can be calculated and the death probability percentage can
be obtained by looking up the corresponding tables. Consequence
analysis of the inside pipelines focuses on the mechanism of
cascading failure. Since leakage at one node and pipeline in the gas
pipeline network will lead to pressure decrease and ow loss, the

Fig. 1. Framework of an integrated quantitative risk analysis method.

429

pressure re-distribution should be calculated. By comparing the

results with the designed threshold of natural gas pipeline network,
the situation of gas supply deciency is clear.
The risk can be evaluated by synthesizing probability assessment and consequence analysis, and mainly involves casualty
evaluation and economic loss evaluation. The representation of
casualty evaluation is the individual risk and societal risk (Jonkman
et al., 2003; TNO Purple Book, 1999), which quantitatively describe
the death probability and criticality, while economic loss evaluation
concerns on the cost of losses due to the gas supply deciency.
2.1. Probability assessment
Generally, the failure of gas pipeline network refers to the
leakage of gas because of the rupture induced by external inuence
or inherent risk, in which the failure rate is used for quantitative
calculation. The failure rate of a pipeline has units of the number of
failures per year per unit length of the pipeline (1/yr km) assuming
uniform conditions along the pipeline section of interest (Jo &
Crowl, 2008). The failure rate of the pipeline for each accident
scenario can be estimated by the historical data and modied
empirical formula. Since the failure rate of a pipeline varies
signicantly with design factors, construction conditions, maintenance techniques and environmental situation, etc. then, the failure
rate of the pipeline in each accident scenario can be quantitative
evaluated (Jo & Ahn, 2005; Sklavounos & Rigas, 2006):

4k Kk a1 ; a2 ; .

(1)

where 4 is the expected failure rate per unit pipeline length

(1/yr km), 4k is the basic failure rate per unit length of pipeline
(1/yr km), Kk is the correction function associated with the failure
causes, a1,a2, . are the variables of the correction function, and the
subscript k denotes the failure causes such as external interference,
construction defects, corrosion, ground movement and others.
The European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group presented an
overall failure rate of 0.575 per 1000 km year based on the experiences over 1.47  106 km year of onshore natural gas pipeline,
which can be used as a general value of failure rate for risk analysis
(Jo & Ahn, 2002; EGIG, 1999).
2.2. Consequence analysis of the outside pipelines
Consequence analysis of the outside pipelines focuses on the
risk of casualty caused by different accidents which is harmful to
the human beings. Consequence analysis of the outside pipelines is
composed of gas release rate calculation, physics effects calculation,
fatality probability unit calculation and casualty percentage
calculation (Han & Weng, 2009). Fig. 2 shows the models of the
consequence analysis of the outside pipelines.
When the gas pipelines rupture, the gas release rate should be
rstly calculated since the harmfulness of gas such as toxicity, heat
and pressure depends on the amount of leakage. The process of
leakage is a isentropic adiabatic expansion process, which can be
described by: (a) hole models (Montiel, Vlchez, & Casal, 1998); (b)
pipe models (Montiel et al., 1998); (c) approximate tting algorithm
(Montiel et al., 1998; Jo & Ahn, 2003; Luo, Zheng, Zhao, Huo, & Yang,
2006); (d) dynamic differential equation model (API PR581, 2000;
Yang, Li, & Lai, 2007; Mazzoldi, Hill, & Colls, 2008; CCPS, 1994).
Recently the hole models have been widely used in literatures as
a general computational method to t the need of quantitative risk
analysis, and it is used to calculate the gas release rate in this paper.
The consequence of pipeline leakage depends on the characteristics of the substance carried by the transmission pipelines and

430

Z.Y. Han, W.G. Weng / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 23 (2010) 428e436

has not taken the volume of the vapor cloud into consideration that
decreases the accuracy of quantitative calculation.
According to the doseeeffect relationship between the dose
of the concrete harmful load as toxicity, heat or pressure and such
recipient categories as death or injuries, the function of fatality
probability unit PT is dened to quantitatively describe the harmful
load. Fatality probability unit can be used for the measurement of
the damage from an accident and that is the critical basis of the
calculation of death probability percentage, which is the nal result
of the accident consequence.
The fatality probability unit from an accident can be estimated by
the following equation (Jo & Ahn, 2005; Sklavounos & Rigas, 2006):

PT a blnIf

Fig. 2. Models of the consequence analysis of the outside pipelines.

the environment around the pipelines. For gas transmission pipelines, the main forms of harm are toxic gas diffusion, jet ame,
re ball and UVCE (Han & Weng, 2009). All the physics effects of the
aforementioned physical processes have quantitative descriptions.
Besides, the historical data provided by the API indicated that the
probability of each kind of accidents is 0.8, 0.1, 0.06 and 0.04 when
the pipeline is ruptured (API PR581, 2000).
When the gas leakage does not get on re, the harm of leakage is
related to the toxicity of gas and the concentration distribution
around the region where pipelines are broken (CCPS, 1994; Yang
et al., 2007; Mazzoldi et al., 2008). The toxicity of gas can be
obtained through the doseeeffect relationship in biological theory
that especially for the hydrogen sulphide in the natural gas.
However, for the urban natural gas pipeline network, the toxic of
gas can be ignored.
When the gas is burning at the leakage source, the re becomes
diffusion ame (i.e. jet ame) and poses a threat to the people near the
leakage source. The risk of jet ame can be quantitative judged by the
measure of thermal radiation. A jet ame can be idealized as a series
of point source heat emitters spreading along the length of the ame.
By collapsing the set of heat emitters into a single point source emitter
located at ground level, the total heat ux received by a ground level
damage receptor is conservatively estimated (API, 1990).
When the leakage of gas forms a persistent vapor cloud but is not
intensive mixing with air, a re ball ensues. By assuming that the
energy releases uniformly within the duration of the re ball, the
thermal radiation ux of re ball can be conservatively estimated,
according to the corresponding calculation model (Luo et al., 2006).
When the leakage of gas intensively mixes with air and
forms a persistent vapor cloud, it will lead to a signicant ash re
or unconned vapor cloud explosion. The spread of explosion is
a comprehensive energy ow which is the mixture of explosive
shock wave and combustion ame. The calculation of thermal
radiation ux for UVCE is similar to re ball, while the calculation
approaches of explosive shock includes TNT equivalent weight
method, TNO Multi-Energy model, BakereStrehlow model, selfconsistent method and numerical simulation method (CCPS, 1994).
In principle, the choice of TNO Multi-Energy model would have
been more consistent with the accurate value. But for the convenience of calculation, the feasible approach for the calculation of
explosion overpressure is modied ash model according to TNT
equivalent weight method. TNT equivalent weight method is an
empirical model which compares the explosion of TNT with that of
gas vapor cloud. It can obtain the satisfactory approximation and
has been widely used in risk analysis and land use plan, although it

(2)

Where a and b are empirical constants that reect the hazard

specic to a harmful load studied and the susceptibility of recipients to the load, respectively. If is a dose of the load for a given
exposure time.
According to the laboratory experimental data on the damage of
heat refer to third degree burns for thermal radiation, the fatality of
a person from heat effect can be expressed as the following equation (CPQRA, 1988; Rausch, Eisenberg, & Lynch, 1977):


4
PT 14:9 2:56ln I 3  104  te

(3)

Where I is the thermal radiation ux and te is the time of the target

exposed to the thermal radiation.
For the fatality of explosion overpressure, a methodology for the
calculation of damages to human beings and buildings based on
explosion characteristic curves has been proposed recently (Alonso,
Ferradas, & Prez, 2006; Alonso, Ferradas, & Miarro, 2008; Alonso,
Ferradas, & Prez, 2008; Ferradas, Alonso, & Miarro, 2008), from
which the empirical constants can be obtained. According to the
laboratory experimental data on the damage of overpressure refer to
lung hemorrhage, the fatality of a person from explosion overpressure
can be expressed using the following equation (Cui, Xu, & Song, 2008):

PT 77:1 6:91lnDP

(4)

Where DP is the overpressure of explosive shock wave.

It has the relationship between the death probability percentage
and the fatality probability unit. When a person is exposed to
different events at the same time, the death probability should be
estimated by integrating the different accident hypothesis, and the
death probability can be obtained by looking up the corresponding
table (Yu & Feng, 1995).
2.3. Consequence analysis of the inside pipelines
Consequence analysis of the inside pipelines focuses on the risk
of economic loss caused by gas supply deciency, which can be
quantitative calculated by the mechanism of cascading failure.
An intended attack or random failure may alter the system by
destroying or degrading part of the network, and the economic
prosperity and societal life may be jeopardized. Leakage at one point
in the gas pipeline will lead to pressure decrease and ow loss, and
can disrupt gas supply to a large area, which means an accident may
result in failure of part of gas pipeline network or even breakdown of
the whole network.
Consequence analysis of the inside pipelines can be obtained
using a propagation model for calculating the re-distribution of gas
pressure in network. The propagation model, which combines gas
release rate model, pipe-node ow model and pipeline network
pressure re-distribution model altogether, is developed by taking
both node and pipeline crack into consideration (Huang, Weng, &

Z.Y. Han, W.G. Weng / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 23 (2010) 428e436

Wu, 2008). Gas release rate model adopts a hole model (Montiel
et al., 1998). And the pipe-node ow model and pressure
re-distribution model is shown in Fig. 3. Firstly, the nodes
and pipelines of the network should be numbered to construct the
topological structure of a network. For a directed graph, the
connection matrix can be estimated by the following equation:

8
< 0; i;j;
Ai; j
1; node i is at the end of pipeline j;
:
1; node i is at the beginning of pipeline j

431

(5)

Where A(i,j) is the element of A. i is the number of node and j is the

number of pipeline. For a network that has N nodes and M pipelines, the connection matrix can be described as ANM. ANM can
be used directly in the accident hypothesis of node rupture. But for
pipeline rupture, the rupture can be regarded as an addition of
a new node, as shown in Fig. 4. Then, the connection matrix can be
reconstructed as A[T,k] 0, A[O,k] 1, A[O,n] 1, A[T,n] 1. So for
a network that has N nodes, M pipelines, and one pipeline ruptures,
the connection matrix can be described as A(N 1)  (M 1).
After the determination of connection matrix, the vector of
pipeline parameter can be determinate. The vector of pipeline
parameter can be estimated by the following equation

qnode q1 ;q2 ;/qN ;qibroken q0ibroken qleak

qpipe Q1 ;Q2 ;/QM

qnode q1 ;q2 ;/qN1 ;qN1 qleak
pipelinerupture:
qpipe Q1 ;Q2 ;/QM1 ;QM1 Qjbroken

noderupture:

(6)
Where qnode is the ow of nodes, qpipe is the ow of pipelines.
qrelease is the release rate of the leakiness resource. q0ibroken is the
ow of node i before it is rupture. Qj(broken) is the ow of pipeline j
0
before it is rupture. Then, the diagonal matrix S should be calculated by which high pressure pipelines and low pressure pipelines
can be given respectively as follow:

Fig. 4. Process of connection matrix improves.

S0 j; j 6:26  107 rl

qpipe jTLj
dj5 T0

qpipe jTZLj
S0 j; j 1:27  1010 rl
dj5 T0

(7)

(8)

Where j is the serial number of pipelines and 1  j  M 1, L(j) is

the length of pipeline j, d(j) is the diameter of pipeline j, T0 is
the Kelvin temperature, 273.16 K, r is the density of gas, l is the
frictional resistant coefcient, Z is the compressibility factor, T is
the temperature inside pipelines. Then the admittance matrix Y of
the network can be estimated by the following equation:

 1 T
Y A S0
A

(9)

where A is the connection matrix of the network. The pressure of

nodes can be estimated by the following equation:

YPnode qnode

(10)

Where Pnode is the pressure of nodes.

The pressures of nodes and pipelines decrease due to the
gas release, and also result in the gas release rate decrease. So the
calculation accuracy should be inspected using the iterative algorithm. The pressure re-distribution of pipelines is given in the
following equation:

DPpipe AT Pnode

(11)

Where DPpipe is the pressure drop of pipelines, ppipe,new ppipe  Dppipe.

Then the ow of pipeline can be written as the following equation:

 1
DPpipe
qpipe S0

(12)

Where qpipe is the ow of pipelines.

If the accuracy of the pipeline ow is not sufcient, the new ow
of nodes which is changed by the gas release rate must be iterated to
the calculation of the pressure of nodes. And the ultimate calculation
result of pressure re-distribution of pipelines is obtained to evaluate
the economic losses.
2.4. Risk evaluation

Fig. 3. Calculation process of pipe-node ow model and pressure re-distribution model.

Risk evaluation is a process of measure that is dened as a mathematical function of the probability of an accident and the consequences of that accident. It focuses mainly on risk measures for loss of
life (including individual and societal risk) and economic risk. The
causation of the loss of life is the consequences of the accidents
outside pipelines such as re, explosion and so on, while the loss of

432

Z.Y. Han, W.G. Weng / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 23 (2010) 428e436

economic is because of the destruction of the accidents and the gas

supply deciency that interrupts industrial production and disturbs
residents' living. It is noteworthy that the risk evaluated should
contain the lethality at the location from all accident scenarios along
pipeline and varies with different locations.
Individual risk is dened as the probability that an average
unprotected person, permanently present at a certain location,
is killed due to an accident resulting from a hazardous activity
(Jonkman et al., 2003). For the gas pipeline network, the calculation
of individual risk should take the failure rate, the probability of each
accident scenario and the death probability percentage of each
accident scenario into consideration. Social risk is dened as
the relationship between frequency and the number of people
suffering from a specied level of harm in a given population from
the realisation of specied hazards. The expected number of death
from a hypothetical accident could be calculated by integrating the
multiplication of fatality and population density within a hazard
area, and it is usually expressed in the form of a graph of cumulative
frequency (F) of N or more casualties plotted against N (FeN curve)
(IGE, 2001).
Economic risk can be evaluated by the probability and consequence of the accidents like destruction of the accidents and gas
supply deciency. When the pressure of a node in the gas pipeline
network is below the designed threshold, the industrial activity will
be disturbed and the loss of economic can be quantitative evaluated
based on the reduction of the production. For the convenience of the
calculation to the place that is in the absence of the economic
operating information, it is assumed that the economic production is
in direct proportion to the gas supply pressure of the nodes that
carry out industrial activities:

EP k$Pnode

(13)

Where E(P) is the expected value of the economic production ($),

Pnode is the gas supply pressure of the nodes, and k is the ratio
coefcient indicates the relationship between the gas supply
pressure and the economic production. And the expected value of
the economic loss can be obtained by the following equation:



ED k$ Pnode  Pnode;new

(14)

Where E(D) is the expected value of the economic loss after the
destruction ($), Pnode,new is the gas supply pressure of the nodes
after the destruction. By integrating the probability and economic
loss, the economic risk can be determined:

ER 4$ED

Fig. 5. The topological structure and parameters of a sample urban gas pipeline
network (Li, 1997).

For the regional urban gas pipeline network, the experimental

conditions can be assumed as follow for the convenience of analysis
and calculation: (1) the recommended values of the exposure
time refer to overpressure and thermal radiation for people is 30 s
(Rausch et al., 1977). (2) the toxicity of the gas can be omitted,
because this is a regional urban gas pipeline network. (3) the
difference of the correction function associated with the failure can
be ignored, so the general value of 0.575 per 1000 km year
presented by The European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group can
be used as a averaged failure rate for the convenience of analysis
and calculation (Jo & Ahn, 2002; EGIG, 1999). (4) the population
density within the hazard area of each node and each pipeline is ai
and bi, i 1,2/14 and j 1,2/20.
The individual risk and societal risk can be obtained from the
analysis of consequences of the outside gas pipeline network. Individual risks are shown in Figs. 6e9 and Tables 1 and 2. Fig. 6 is the
individual risk with the assumption of node 10 failure. It can be
evidenced that the individual risk distribution with the assumption
of node failure show the round shape, and so the relationship that

(15)

Where E(R) is the economic risk of the natural gas pipeline network
($ yr1), 4 is the expected failure rate of the nodes.
3. Calculations and discussions
To approve the validity of the proposed model, a scenario of
urban gas pipeline network that includes twenty pipelines and
fourteen nodes is applied. Fig. 5 is the topological structure and
parameters of a sample urban gas pipeline network (Li, 1997).
In order to calculate the risk, the initial accident hypothesis is
assumed as follow under the principle of worst presume: (1) for the
consequence analysis of the outside pipelines, a failure in one
pipeline causes an orice with one-third of the pipeline diameter,
or a failure at one node causes an orice with the diameter of
100 mm. (2) for the consequence analysis of the inside pipelines,
the pressure re-distribution is caused by a leakage from an orice
with one-thirty of the pipeline diameter in one pipeline, or that
with the diameter of 10 mm in one node.

Fig. 6. Individual risk with the assumption of node 10 failure.

Z.Y. Han, W.G. Weng / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 23 (2010) 428e436

433

Fig. 7. Individual risk proportion from different accidents with the assumption of node
10 failure.

Fig. 9. Individual risk proportion from different accidents with the assumption of
pipeline 18 failure.

the individual risk decreasing with radius is shown in Fig. 6. It is

indicated that the individual risk is almost unchangeable from the
center to a certain radius (5.3 m for node 10), because of the high
fatality probability unit (which makes the death probability
percentage is 100%) near the leakage source. The same situation can
be seen in Fig. 8 that shows individual risk with the assumption of
pipeline 18 failure. It should be noted that the abscissa of Fig. 8 is the
vertical distance from the midpoint along the pipeline. The individual risk descending with the increase of the vertical distance
away from a certain vertical distance (3.4 m for pipeline 18) can be
seen in Fig. 8. From the above description of the integrated quantitative risk analysis method, the risks are from different accidents, e.g.
jet ame, re ball and explosion, etc. Fig. 7 gives the individual risk
proportion from different accidents including jet ame, re ball and
explosion (resulting in heat and overpressure) with the assumption
of node 10 failure. And Fig. 9 is the individual risk proportion
with the assumption of pipeline 18 failure. The same shape of the
individual risk proportion with three kinds of accident can be seen in
Figs. 7 and 9, in which the risk inuence area of jet ame and re ball
combustion refers to the damage of third degree burns for thermal

radiation, and the risk inuence area of explosion refers to the

damage of lung hemorrhage for overpressure. And Figs. 7 and 9 also
indicate that jet ame results in more risk proportion with the
increasing radius (and vertical distance) than others because
the inuence area of jet ame is larger than the other accidents.
Although the risk of all the three accidents descends with the
increase of the radius (and vertical distance) away from the release
resource, the risk of jet ame descends slower than the other accidents, and the individual risk proportion of jet ame ascends with
the increasing radius (and vertical distance).
Tables 1 and 2 are the radius and vertical distance with
the individual risk of 106 and the risk inuence area with the
assumption of node and pipeline failure. According to the analysis
above, the risk inuence area is equal to the radius and vertical
distance of jet ame, while the risk outside the risk inuence area
should be zero. The radius or vertical distance increases with the
gas release rate, and longer distance means higher risk. It is indicated from Table 1 that the risk of node 7 is obviously lower than
other nodes in this sample urban gas pipeline network though the
initial pressure is the lowest among all nodes in network. And the
individual risks of other nodes are almost similar. Table 2 shows
that the individual risks of the pipelines 5, 7, 8 10 and 20 is higher
than other pipelines in this network, and these pipelines should be
Table 1
The result of individual risk and social risk analysis with the assumption of node
failure.
Node no. Gas release Radius of risk
Radius with individual Social risk
(ai)
rate (kg/s) inuence area (m) risk of 106 (m)

Fig. 8. Individual risk with the assumption of pipeline 18 failure.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

0.6926
0.7482
0.7744
0.7499
0.7789
0.7890
0.3065
0.7773
0.7393
0.7659
0.7876
0.8410
0.8649
0.8126

9.4786
9.8517
10.0227
9.8629
10.0518
10.1168
6.3055
10.0415
9.7930
9.9676
10.1078
10.4448
10.5922
10.2670

7.0610
7.3340
7.4590
7.3420
7.4810
7.5280
4.7265
7.4730
7.2910
7.4190
7.5220
7.7690
7.8670
7.6380

0.006654
0.007178
0.007427
0.007195
0.007469
0.007564
0.003000
0.007454
0.007095
0.007346
0.007551
0.008055
0.008280
0.007787

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Z.Y. Han, W.G. Weng / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 23 (2010) 428e436

Table 2
The result of individual risk and social risk analysis with the assumption of pipeline
failure.
Pipeline
no.

Gas release
rate (kg/s)

Vertical distance
of risk inuence
area (m)

Vertical distance
with individual
risk of 106 (m)

Social
risk (bi)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

0.0801
0.1453
0.2348
0.2355
0.4804
0.3658
0.4818
0.5011
0.1171
0.4813
0.1847
0.1823
0.1512
0.1182
0.0841
0.0836
0.2396
0.1506
0.1590
0.4932

3.2234
4.3415
5.5189
5.5271
7.8941
6.8885
7.9056
8.0624
3.8975
7.9015
4.8948
4.8629
4.4287
3.9157
3.3029
3.2931
5.5750
4.4199
4.5415
7.9986

2.7115
3.7470
4.8746
4.8821
7.1674
6.1943
7.1788
7.3308
3.3305
7.1747
4.2760
4.2452
3.8304
3.3470
2.7840
2.7750
4.9281
3.8218
3.9378
7.2686

0.072467
0.018311
0.185430
0.079419
0.156849
0.236370
0.314799
0.240601
0.089679
0.156891
0.162378
0.183672
0.145189
0.108948
0.07449
0.059882
0.107220
0.165128
0.169972
0.119424

especially protected to decrease the risks. As the above description,

the societal risk can be obtained with the individual risk distribution and the population density distribution.
The FN-curve of social risk is shown in Figs. 10 and 11 and Tables
1 and 2. Fig. 10 is the social risk with the assumption of node 10
failure, and Fig. 11 is the social risk with the assumption of pipeline
18 failure. Tables 1 and 2 are the social risk with the assumption
of node and pipeline failure. It is indicated from Figs. 10 and 11 and
Tables 1 and 2 that the social risk of pipelines are evidently higher
than nodes, since the individual risk along the pipelines leads to
the ascending of the social risk with the increase of pipeline length.
So the social risk ascends with the increase of individual risk and
inuence area.
The economic risk can be obtained from the analysis of consequences of the inside gas pipeline network. Fig. 12 gives the pressure re-distribution with the assumption of node 10 and pipeline 18
failures. Comparing to the initial pressure, the pressure of each
node with node 10 and pipeline 18 failures is lower, except that of
node 14. The reason is that the supply pressure of node 14 is a xed
value of 1.5 kPa, which means that the total pressure loss in the gas

Fig. 11. FN-curve of social risk with the assumption of pipeline 18 failure (bi).

Fig. 12. The pressure re-distribution with the assumption of node 10 and pipeline 18
failure.

Table 3
Economy risk of the gas pipeline network with the assumption of node failure.

Fig. 10. FN-curve of social risk with the assumption of node 10 failure (ai).

Failure node

Total pressure
loss (%)
Economy loss
(E(D),k)
Economy risk
(E(R), k($ yr1))
Failure node
Total pressure
loss (%)
Economy loss
(E(D), k)
Economy risk
(E(R), k($ yr1))

16.4

13.5

4.5

29.7

13.0

20.7

20.3

3220

2650

880

5840

2550

4070

3990

1.85

1.52

0.51

3.36

1.47

2.34

2.29

8
10.7

9
30.3

10
39.1

11
34.8

12
24.5

13
20.4

14
0

2100

5950

7680

6840

4810

4010

1.21

3.42

4.42

3.93

2.77

2.31

Z.Y. Han, W.G. Weng / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 23 (2010) 428e436

435

Table 4
Economy risk of the gas pipeline network with the assumption of pipeline failure.
Failure pipeline

10

Total pressure loss (%)

Economy loss (k)
Economy risk (k($ yr1))
Failure pipeline
Total pressure loss (%)
Economy loss (k)
Economy risk (k($ yr1))

9.4
1850
1.06
11
8.4
1650
0.95

11.4
2240
1.29
12
14.7
2890
1.66

9.6
1890
1.09
13
12.3
2420
1.39

7.4
1460
0.84
14
1.7
330
0.19

12.9
2540
1.46
15
10.4
2050
1.18

10.4
2050
1.18
16
7.9
1550
0.89

21.2
4170
2.40
17
7.6
1490
0.86

8.4
1650
0.95
18
6.8
1340
0.77

8.5
1670
0.96
19
34.5
6780
3.90

24.8
4880
2.81
20
45.2
8890
5.11

pipeline network is 0 with the failure of node 14, as shown in

Table 3. When a node or pipeline fails, the leakage may cause the
gas supply pressure of most nodes in the network drop. So by
taking count of the pressure drop together, the economic loss
can be evaluated. Tables 3 and 4 are the total pressure loss of the gas
pipeline network with the assumption of node and pipeline failure.
It is clear in Table 3 that the total pressure loss with node 10 failures
is the most among all nodes, which means the node 10 should be
stressed. The similar reason of stressing the pipeline 20 can be seen
in Table 4.
If obtaining the relationship between the economy and the
pressure loss, the economic risk of each node and pipeline in the
gas pipeline network can also be calculated by economic dimensions, like the monetary valuation. The economy loss of the gas
pipeline network with the assumption of each node and pipeline
failure is also showed in Tables 3 and 4. It is indicated that the
pressure re-distribution may result in great loss in the economic
output, and the node 10, 11 and pipeline 19, 20 should be especially
protected to decrease the economy risk.
From the above risk analysis of the sample urban gas pipeline
network, it is indicated the proposed integrated quantitative risk
analysis method for natural gas pipeline network can be used in
practical application. But it should be noted that the individual
(societal) risk and economic risk are separated because it has no
monetary valuation of human life. It may be unethical to put a price
on human life. However, it is arguably not taking the economic value
of human life into account leads to a lower economic damage, and
thus results in a lower safety of the considered system (Jonkman
et al., 2003). Another question is the operation speed of the
pressure re-distribution model for the gas pipeline network. The use
of iterative algorithm will obviously increase the operation time
(Huang et al., 2008). Nowadays, there have been a few recent studies
on cascading failures by using complex networks theory, especially
on network structure failure models (Albert, Jeong, & Barabsi,
2000). The cascading failure models of complex networks can
help to make the solution to the pressure re-distribution for largescale gas pipeline network.
4. Conclusions
The main aim of this paper is to present an integrated quantitative risk analysis method for natural gas pipeline network, the
corresponding framework and needed models are described. This
method consists of the probability assessment, the consequence
analysis and the risk evaluation of accidents. For the consequence
analysis of the outside pipelines, the heat and overpressure are
considered to calculate the individual risk and societal risk. And the
economic risk of the gas pipeline network is considered to analyze
the consequence of the inside gas pipelines. A sample urban gas
pipeline network is adopted to demonstrate the presented integrated quantitative risk analysis method. The results show that
this presented integrated method for natural gas pipeline network
can be used in practical application. Future work should be

concentrated on the adoption of cascading failure models of

complex networks to speed up the computation of pressure
re-distribution of the natural gas pipeline network, especially for
large-scale gas pipeline network.
Acknowledgements
This paper was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 70871069). The authors deeply appreciate
the support.
Nomenclature

ANM
A(i,j)
a,b
a1,a2,.
d(j)
E(D)
E(P)
E(R)
I
If
i
j
Kk
k
L(j)
M
N
Pnode
Pnode,new

DP
DPpipe
Qj(broken)
qnode
qpipe
qrelease
q0ibroken
0
S
T
T0
te
Y
Z

r
l
k
4
4k

connection matrix (e)

element of the connection matrix ()
empirical constants ()
variables of the correction function ()
diameter of pipeline j (m)
expected value of the economic loss after
the destruction ($)
expected value of the economic production ($)
economic risk of the natural gas pipeline network ($ yr1)
thermal radiation ux (J/m2 s)
dose of the load for a given exposure time ()
serial number of node ()
serial number of pipelines ()
correction function associated with the failure causes ()
failure causes ()
length of pipeline j (m)
number of pipeline ()
number of node ()
pressure of nodes (N/m2)
gas supply pressure of the nodes after the
destruction (N/m2)
overpressure of explosive shock wave (N/m2)
pressure drop of pipelines (N/m2)
ow of pipeline j before it is rupture (kg/s)
ow of nodes (kg/s)
ow of pipelines (kg/s)
release rate of the leakiness resource (kg/s)
ow of node i before it is rupture (kg/s)
diagonal matrix ()
temperature inside pipelines (K)
Kelvin temperature (K)
time of the target exposed to the thermal radiation (s)
admittance matrix ()
compressibility factor ()
density of gas (kg/m3)
frictional resistant coefcient ()
ratio coefcient indicates ()
expected failure rate per unit pipeline length (1/yr km)
basic failure rate per unit length of pipeline (1/yr km)

436

Z.Y. Han, W.G. Weng / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 23 (2010) 428e436

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