Terrorism - Risk and Evaluation

Mumbai 30/11/08: Enough and more has happened in the last few days from the coward act of few men; what ever their aims where. The gun rattilage has resulted in 200 fatalities and more than 300 injured and thousands affected (directly and indirectly). Apart from Mumbai, in the last one year, India has seen many terror attacks. Many people have been killed in the ghastly attached in Assam, Malegaon, Delhi, ahmedabad and Hyderabad.
Leaving the questions like:
- Who did this, who all are behind this?
- What were the intensions and what they were trying to gain?
let us look into, what the impact is.
The financial loss is accounted for Rs 4000 crore; this is mainly from the immediate business upsets. But what happens for the loss of life and disruptions to the daily life of common man.
Apart from the compensations from the Government will people benefit from anything else.
Are people insured??
Yes that is a big question and to ponder into the fine print (terms and conditions). "Unlike US and UK, we don't have any insurance cover against 'terrorist' acts. Loss of life due to terror may fall in the category," says an official of Kotak Life Insurance. [www.ndtv.com]

How to assess the risk from terrorism?
what are the potential consequences?
how frequent it can happen?
To answer above, it is becoming increasingly difficult by looking into the mode of operation, the extent of catastrophe and the uncertainity in the sequence of events (domino effects).

There are some countries who have some guidance on the insurance for terrosim related risk:

1. Australia
2. Austria
3. Finland
4. France
5. Germany
6. Israel
7. Namibia
8. Netherlands
9. Russia
10. South Africa
11. Spain
12. Switzerland
13. Turkey
14. United Kingdom

Source: wikipedia

More information is available from:
http://www.clydeco.com/services/expertise/insuranceandreinsurance/legal-guides.cfm?contentID=2135
http://www.iii.org/media/facts/statsbyissue/catastrophes/
http://www.riskandinsurance.com/0702choice.asp
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118597786/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0


SreeRaj R Nair
Risk Management

Disclaimer: The comments above are authors own view only and the author assumes no responsibility or liability incurred as a result of any use or reliance upon the information and material contained within or downloaded from its website. Hypertext links to third party websites are provided for the convenience of readers only. E&OE

Office - a risk to health and wellbeing?

A person working in an office is clearly at much less risk of injury than an employee on a construction site or an engineering workshop. But, there are numerous statistics showing that office work does pose a risk to health, safety and wellbeing.

What are the hazards? And health and safety problems related to office work?
- Occupational stress
- Musculoskeletal disorders (affecting back, upper limbs and neck)
- Slips and trips

DSE Risks:
Display screen equipment or more commonly computer workstations – the DSE users are increasing exponentially in recent years. DSE is not inherently dangerous to any health problems; the injuries, predominantly upper limb disorders (ULDs – aches and pain in hands, wrists, arms, shoulders and neck), results due to inappropriate working methods or poor organisation or insufficient breaks etc.
Some tips on using DSE / VDU (visual display unit)
- Get comfortable: adjust the screens, seats (height and posture), keyboard, mouse and documents to suit you; your forearms should be approximately horizontal and your eyes the same height as the top of VDU, free space for leg movement, avoid glare and reflections
- Keying in: a space in front of the keyboard is sometimes helpful for resting hand and wrists
- Mouse: use it with wrist straight, not stretched, loose grips
- Screen: adjust brightness, contrast to suit the lighting in the room, clean screen surface, suitable text size
- Posture and breaks: change posture, avoid repeated stretching to reach things you need, frequent short breaks
Source: www:hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg36.pdf

Assess the risk:
This should include risk from all the hazards identified in the office and related activities (workstation, stress, manual handling, electrical equipment, fire, ventilation, lighting, slips, trips, violence, noise etc).
Workstation: The ergonomic principle to follow is that the equipment should fit the worker, rather than forcing the worker to fit the equipment. In order to find what suits, a risk assessment need to be carried out.
There are numerous publications and checklist available for office safety and some specifically for DSE risk.
Eg. “the law on VDUs: An easy guide” (HSG90 ISBN 0-7176-2602-4)
www.hse.gov.uk/msd/index.htm
www.hse.gov.uk/electricity/information/maintenance.htm
www.hse.gov.uk/temperature/thermal
http://www.labtrain.noaa.gov/osha600/refer/menu15d.pdf
http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/ergonomics/office/
http://www.comcare.gov.au/safety/virtual_office



Related regulations:
- UK, Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999
- UK, Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992
- US OSHA – 29 CFR Part 1910 http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=FEDERAL_REGISTER&p_id=16305&bcsi_scan_42F16C56A779BF44=0&bcsi_scan_filename=owadisp.show_document
- Australia OHS Act 1991
- Australia OHS(CE)A(EIC) Act 2004 http://www.comcare.gov.au/ohs_legislation/ohs_acts__and__regulations

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

A lot is talked about carbon trading, energy management, carbon foot print, reduce carbon emission etc and relates to greenhouse effect. What is it all about?

The greenhouse effect refers to the change in the thermal equilibrium of the earth (or a planet) by the presence of an atmosphere containing gas that absorbs and emits infrared radiation. The accumulation of greenhouse gases in atmosphere from the early days of industrialisation (more than 200 years) changed the upper atmosphere and now acts as greenhouse trapping more heat within the earth’s atmosphere and creating the effect of global warming.

Greenhouse gases (GHG) - some of the most significant are
- Water vapour
- Carbon dioxide (CO2)
- Nitrous oxide (N2O)
- Methane (CH4)
- Ozone
- Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6)
- Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
- Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)

International bodies has identified the threat to the earth and urged to manage the situation. Guidance and initiatives in this regard are:
- World business council for sustainable development / World resource institute (WBCSD/WRI) published GHG protocol in 1998
- International Organisation for Standardisation’s ISO 14064, Parts 1-3 in 2008
- ISO 14065 and ISO 14066 (to come soon).
- Kyoto Protocol

Industrial and regulatory bodies are also in the process of incorporation GHG initiatives (quantify emissions etc.) into the environmental management system (policy and procedures).

Greenhouse gases are essential to maintaining the temperature of the Earth (otherwise the average temperature drops to -18oC), but excess of greenhouse gas can result in global warming (increase in the average measured temperature) and climate change.
Hence it is quite important to maintain a fine balance for the future of the Earth.

Piracy - the real one

The actual piracy – hijackings on the sea. Most common threat to shipping..

International Maritime Bureau (IMB) has got some alarming figures
Region Incidents
Africa (including Somalia): 120
Nigeria : 42
Far East : 11
Indian subcontinent : 30
South America : 21
South east Asia : 69
Rest of the world : 12

Courtesy: Adal RAfiq, ICIS reported, May 2008

2008 has seen an unprecedented rise in pirate attacks, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Between January and September, 199 piracy incidents were recorded, a third of them off the Somali coast. The latest of this was seizing the 330m long (1,100 ft) Saudi owned vessel - Sirius Star- which was carrying 2million barrels of oil.

From various sources

The issue is that, many of these vessels contains hazardous materials (chemicals, explosives etc.). The risk on the industry as such is on multiple grounds - no rawmaterial, production loss, projects on haults, economic loss.. and most serious the threat from the use of these materials for other destructive purposes!!

SreeRaj R Nair

Combustion (fire) and ignition

Fire is one of the major accident hazards and effects from flammable releases contribute to the risk from the process plant.

The three essential conditions for fire are fuel, oxygen and heat. The nature and presence of each of these decides the combustion process and the effects from it. Depending on the release phase (solid, liquid or gas), release velocity (flammable mixture available for combustion), and availability (and nature) of source of ignition the chemical reaction could result in different forms. The fire may be classified as jet flames, liquid fires (pool and running/drain), vapour cloud fires (with or without explosion), solid fires (solid materials, dust), warehouse fires and fires associated with oxygen.

Some potential ignition sources on process plants include naked flames, hot surfaces, hot particles, hot work, chemical energy, engines, vehicles, lightning, smoking, hot materials, hot gases, reactive materials, Pyrophoric materials, radio frequency emission, electrical equipment, static electricity, self-heating, arson and sabotage (more information can be found in Table 16.24, FPLees Loss Prevention and Process Safety, 3rd Edition).

Most of the issues related to explosion prevention and protection are addressed by ATEX Directive [http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/atex/dir92-en.pdf]
In the UK, the requirements are as per DSEAR [http://www.hse.gov.uk/fireandexplosion/atex.htm]


Estimation of risk and probability of ignition:

Individual risk from an event resulting in fire (flammable effects) can be determined by
Individual risk = failure rate x ignition probability x fractional time of attendance x vulnerability
Where,
failure rate is the estimated frequency (per year) of the event that gives rise to the release scenario.
Ignition probability is the The probability that the release will ignite given that the failure has occurred (normally based on the release rate, see table below)
Fractional time of attendance is the maximum proportion of an individual’s time that is spent inside the building under consideration. This is fixed throughout representing one person for 40 hours a week.

A guide on selection of ignition probability for gaseous release is given in the following table.

IGNITION PROBABILITIES FOR GASEOUS RELEASES
Leak (kg/s) Probability of ignition
Gaseous release
Minor (<1) : 0.01
Major (1-50) : 0.07
Massive (>50) : 0.3

Liquid release
Minor (<1) 0.01
Major (1-50) 0.03
Massive (>50) 0.08

Courtesy: Cox, A.W., Lees, F.P. & Ang, M.L.; Classification of Hazardous Locations; IIGCHL, IChemE.; 1990

More information on ignition probability, is available in the IP research report., Ignition probability review, model development and look-up correlations, Published by Energy Institute, London, Jan 2006

Note: This is a small note on a factor that need to be considered while quantifying risk in process industry.