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Citation |
Pence J, Miller I, Sakurahara T, Whitacre J, Reihani S, Kee E, Mohaghegh Z. Risk Anal. 2019; 39(6): 1262-1280. |
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Affiliation |
Illinois Informatics Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA. |
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Copyright |
(Copyright © 2019, Society for Risk Analysis, Publisher John Wiley and Sons) |
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DOI |
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PMID |
30468695 |
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Abstract |
In the nuclear power industry, Level 3 probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is used to estimate damage to public health and the environment if a severe accident leads to large radiological release. Current Level 3 PRA does not have an explicit inclusion of social factors and, therefore, it is not possible to perform importance ranking of social factors for risk-informing emergency preparedness, planning, and response (EPPR). This article offers a methodology for adapting the concept of social vulnerability, commonly used in natural hazard research, in the context of a severe nuclear power plant accident. The methodology has four steps: (1) calculating a hazard-independent social vulnerability index for the local population; (2) developing a location-specific representation of the maximum radiological hazard estimated from current Level 3 PRA, in a geographic information system (GIS) environment; (3) developing a GIS-based socio-technical risk map by combining the social vulnerability index and the location-specific radiological hazard; and (4) conducting a risk importance measure analysis to rank the criticality of social factors based on their contribution to the socio-technical risk. The methodology is applied using results from the 2012 Surry Power Station state-of-the-art reactor consequence analysis. A radiological hazard model is generated from MELCOR accident consequence code system, translated into a GIS environment, and combined with the Center for Disease Control social vulnerability index (SoVI). This research creates an opportunity to explicitly consider and rank the criticality of location-specific SoVI themes based on their influence on risk, providing input for EPPR. Language: en |
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Keywords |
Geographic information systems; Level 3 probabilistic risk assessment; social vulnerability |