Fire and Explosion Economic Losses (FEEL) Index: A new approach for quantifying economic damages due to accidents in hydrocarbon storage sites

One of the areas most affected by the occurrence of fires and explosions is the economy. These accidents lead to direct economic damages, which results in the withdrawal of capital for the reconstruction of damaged areas. In addition, there are other indirect economic losses, such as business interruption and reputational losses. The DOW Fire and Explosion Index (F&EI-DOW) is currently the most complete methodology for quantifying economic losses. Notwithstanding, the F&EI-DOW focuses on quantifying the hazardous potential of process units, and, does not provide an overall criterion for the hazardous potential of the entire industrial site with regard to: the inclusion of the so-called domino effect, the probabilistic risk assessment, the updating of existing risk analysis tools with new emerging Artificial Intelligence Techniques, and the quantification of reputation losses. For this purpose, the development of a new Fire and Explosion Economic Losses-Index (FEEL-Index) is proposed, which integrates the F&EI-DOW with new factors, such as the Damaged Area Factor, the Accident Probability Factor and the Reputation Loss Factor. With regard to the application to a case study, the total losses quantified by the overall FEEL-Index predict a value higher than the one predicted by the F&EI-DOW. The results obtained on an hydrocarbon storage case study show that the application of the FEEL-Index is relevant for increasing the risk perception, as well as providing guidance for prevention, mitigation, and risk management of accidents in process industries.