Quantitative Analysis of Economic Losses Induced by Malevolent Acts of Interference to Process Facilities

Intentional attacks on chemical and process installations have intensified in recent years due to the exacerbation of conflicts in critical areas. These attacks can escalate affecting nearby areas, potentially triggering domino effects with severe impact on assets, people, and the environment. Existing security studies primarily focused on impacts to people, with limited focus on economic losses and the combined effect of safety and security barriers in managing external attack scenarios. This work addresses this gap by assessing the extent of damages from such threats and integrating these findings into safety and economic analyses. To achieve this, a cost-benefit analysis tool was developed. The tool is based on a probabilistic approach and evaluates different protection strategies against intentional attacks to process facilities. A Bayesian Network (BN) model is used to handle the complexity of attack scenarios. Damages are incorporated in the BN, along with the cost of safety and security barriers, through a dedicated cost-benefit function. A demonstrative case study highlights the benefits and limitations of the methodology, showing the influence of barriers on economic losses, and driving the selection of the more effective protection strategy for industrial facilities. This research addresses key gaps in integrating safety and security within industrial risk management and provides a flexible tool for optimizing resources when facing complex threats.

Keywords: Physical security, Security management, Economic losses, Bayesian networks, Cascading events, Cost-benefit analysis, Domino effects.