Paper (2): Operational safety analysis for complex technological projects

Abstract: Natural hazards such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes in most cases hold very small probabilities of happening during a project life. Yet, evaluating the effect of such hazards on the systems operation of complex technological projects such as hydropower facilities or chemical processing plants requires prohibitively large numbers of calculations and significant computational resources. In order to effectively address these safety issues, rare event simulation techniques are usually applied. This study reviews past research on safety management for such complex technological projects under the threat of extreme events, and demonstrates the effectiveness of variance reduction in Monte Carlo simulations of project operations. Various approaches to rare event simulation techniques are categorized and compared by their respective advantages and disadvantages.