Rare Event Simulation-based Operational Safety Analysis for Complex Technological Projects : A Literature Review

Natural hazards such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes in most cases hold very small probabilities of happening during a project life. Yet, evaluating the effects of such hazards on the of complex technological systems operation such as hydropower facilities or chemical processing plants requires prohibitively large numbers of calculations and significant computational resources. In order to address these safety issues with efficient computational resource consumption, rare event simulation techniques are widely adopted. This study reviews the past research on the simulation of rare events with very small probabilities of occurrence. These techniques not only help to accelerate the computation speed, but also increase the estimation accuracy. In the study, two major rare event simulation techniques, importance sampling and splitting, are categorized and compared with their respective advantages and disadvantages. Applications of them are also summarized, especially for the safety management of such complex technological projects. Finally, detailed reviews of the dam-reservoir systems are presented, which serves as the case study demonstrating effectiveness of rare event simulation for complex project operations.

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