Abstract
The chemical and process industry (CPI) is highly vulnerable to natural hazards, which can trigger severe technological accidents (Natech events) with cascading impacts on society and the environment, including lengthy and costly post-disaster recoveries. Despite recent advances in Natech risk and resilience assessment, existing frameworks often fail to consistently capture interactions and external dependencies, such as the loss of critical supporting infrastructures, which can critically influence accident evolution and system performance. Based on the current state of the art in Natech research, this study identifies key aspects that should be incorporated into a comprehensive assessment of natural hazard impacts in the CPI. Drawing on evidence from past events and existing quantitative methodologies, the analysis highlights limitations in current approaches and emphasizes the need for a holistic framework. To address these gaps, relevant quantitative methods from regional risk and resilience analysis were examined to support the inclusion of external dependencies in the assessment of the loss of functionality. A notional case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework, showing a marked reduction in system resilience when the unavailability of external supporting infrastructure is explicitly considered. The results underline the importance of integrating interdependencies and indirect failure pathways to improve Natech risk and resilience assessment in CPI.
