A GIS-based risk assessment of hydrogen transport: Case study in Yokohama City
Introduction
In recent years, efforts to realize a hydrogen society in Japan have been accelerating. In this society, hydrogen is transported in trucks from the production and storage plants to the consumption areas. Hydrogen has dangerous physicochemical properties that include the risk of explosions or fires. Therefore, when an accident occurs, it can severely impact the surrounding area. In addition, it is predicted that as hydrogen consumption increases in the future, the quantity to be transported will increase, thereby increasing the demand that the hydrogen be transported safely. The hydrogen transport safety must be verified through risk assessments.
Owing to topographical restrictions, logistics in Japan are dependent on road transport. Therefore, hydrogen transport is mainly conducted via roads. A major characteristic of road transport is that, unlike spatial fixed facilities (e.g. chemical plants) as a risk source, the surrounding environment changes constantly by the spatial movement. As a result, spatial features of a transport routes must be reflected in the hydrogen-transport risk assessment.
The hydrogen transport risk is recognized as the risk associated with the spatial movement of risk source for hydrogen. As the typical spatial fixed risk source, there is hydrogen fueling station. Many previous studies focused on risk assessment for hydrogen fueling stations; these were compressed hydrogen type [[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]], liquid hydrogen type [7,8], liquid organic hydrogen type [[9], [10], [11]], on-site type [12], hydrogen power plant type [13], and dispenser type [14] fueling stations. Kim J et al., Kim E et al., and Honselaar et al. compared hydrogen fueling station risks for various types of stations [[15], [16], [17]]. The usefulness of a Bayesian network to represent a complex accident process was verified through the case study of an on-site hydrogen fueling station [18]. The HAZID method [19] detected hazards of hybrid gasoline-hydrogen fueling stations for risk assessment. To realize the efficient and detailed risk screening of large areas, Huang developed a grid-based risk mapping method based on the Bayesian network for hydrogen fueling stations [20].
Although many risk assessments for hydrogen fueling stations from the spatial fixed perspective are available, risk assessments of hydrogen transport from the spatial moved perspective are limited. Previous studies have assessed the risks of hydrogen transport via roads in the case of compressed hydrogen [21,22], using a qualitative approach, including the accident frequency and consequence. Moreover, the risks in terms of the transport of liquid hydrogen [7] and of compressed hydrogen and liquid hydrogen [14] have been assessed based on the risk matrix. A spatial moved perspective needs to consider the spatial features of transport routes in the risk assessment of hydrogen transport. However, previous studies on hydrogen transport risk assessment have not focused on the spatial features of the transport routes [7,14,20,21].
In risk assessments of the transport of hazardous materials, except for hydrogen, some spatial features are considered by mainly linking a geographic information system (GIS) [[23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33]]. Spatial features affect the frequency and the consequence, respectively, which constitute the risk assessment. In the consequence estimation, the population density along the transport routes on the GIS is utilized as the spatial feature [[23], [24], [25],[27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33]]. Population density information can be easily handled using the GIS, and thus, can be automatically reflected in the consequence estimation. In the frequency estimation, the importance of spatial features with respect to a variety of road structures (e.g., road type, road configuration, and topography surrounding the road) and traffic volume (e.g., travel velocity) is known. Some previous studies have successfully quantified the effect of spatial features on the frequency by statistically analyzing traffic accident information; however, these studies have targeted limited spatial features, mainly for the road type [[23], [24], [25], [26]]. Other studies have followed comprehensive spatial features, while those studies depended on expert judgment to assess the effect of the spatial features [[27], [28], [29], [30],32,33]. The information for frequency-related spatial features cannot be easily handled using the GIS, and thus, cannot be automatically reflected in the frequency estimation.
With reference to previous literature, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have been published focusing on hydrogen transport risk assessment considering the spatial features. Previous studies targeting hazardous material transport have explored spatial features using the GIS. However, limitations related to the coverage of spatial features, the quantification method of spatial features, and the linkage of spatial features into the GIS were observed.
To overcome these limitations, the present study develops a hydrogen transport risk assessment method that considers spatial features, using the GIS and traffic accident information. It considers the road structure, road traffic volume on transport routes, and population density along these transport routes as the spatial features with high linkage to the GIS. In addition, this study includes a risk assessment case study for the city of Yokohama, Japan.
Section snippets
Analytical framework
This section presents an overall image of the hydrogen transport risk assessment method. The risk assessment method establishes transport routes from the hydrogen production and storage plant to hydrogen stations, divides the routes into road segments, and estimates the risk (fatalities/year) using the information regarding hydrogen transport accidents for each segment. The given transport routes from the plant to the stations have their objective function set to minimize costs, based on the
Object of the case study
The object of the case study was compressed-hydrogen-transport in Yokohama City, Japan, in the first half of the 2020s. Yokohama City was selected because it is attempting to popularize hydrogen energy (see Fig. 1) [41]. The background maps shown in Fig. 1, Fig. 2 can be obtained by the national land numerical-information data-download service provided by the MLIT [42]. The candidate hydrogen-energy carriers are compressed hydrogen, liquid hydrogen, organic hydride, and ammonia. At present, it
Conclusion
This paper proposes a method of assessing hydrogen-transport risk, considering detailed spatial features related to the transport-route road structure, traffic volume, and population density, based on GIS and traffic accident information. The study includes a case study that hypothesized the first half of the 2020s, i.e., the near future, and applied the proposed risk assessment method to compressed-hydrogen transport in Yokohama City, Japan.
Although the risk (fatalities/year) of explosion- and
Funding
This study was funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP).
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This study was Supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP), Energy Carrier Research No. 10.
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