Domino effect and cascading events

Domino effect is a relevant cause of escalation in industrial accident scenarios. Severe cascading events may be triggered by domino effect caused by minor primary scenarios as jet fires and pool fires. The identification and quantitative assessment of domino effects and of the specific scenarios generated is thus of utmost importance to obtain comprehensive overall figures of industrial risk in industrial parks and in extended industrial areas.

The activities carried out in this research area are aimed at:

• the development of static and dynamic methods and tools for the identification of domino scenarios and the quantitative risk assessment of escalation involving domino effects
• the development of probabilistic damage models for the assessment of escalation probability in domino scenarios, also considering the effect of multiple simultaneous primary events
• the assessment of safety barriers and safety systems performance in preventing and mitigating escalation caused by domino effect
• the development of detailed models for passive and active safety barriers performance based on experimental data and simulation
• the development of methods for the assessment of inherent safety and of safety distances to prevent domino effects

Research and Industrial projects on this topic address:

• Development of guidelines for safety distances to prevent escalation of specific scenarios

• Development of detailed FEM/CFD models to assess the possibility of domino effect in complex lay-outs