A hybrid copula-fragility approach for investigating the impact of hazard dependence on a process facility’s failure

Abstract Multiple disasters induced by hurricanes such as floods, strong winds, and heavy rainfall have always been a significant threat to coastal infrastructures. However, few studies have attempted to model the dependence between hazards and study its impact on multi-hazard risks—these cognitive deficiencies inevitably affect the control of risks. This paper addresses these difficulties by first using the copulas to capture the dependence between hurricane-induced floods and strong winds based on synthetic multi-hazard events. Moreover, another two types of dependence, regression-based and mutually independent, are constructed to compare the impact of different dependence behaviors on the facility’s failure. Second, the frequency of concurrent events and a scenario-based fragility function are convolved to quantify the multi-hazard risk of storage tanks. Subsequently, the annualized failure risk (AFR) and the mean return period of failure (MRPF) are used as two metrics for the multi-hazard risk. The case study results demonstrate that the BB1 copula can accurately describe the change in dependence across the full range of the multivariate distribution, avoiding overestimation or underestimation of equipment failure risks. The application of risk zoning provides decision-makers with more intuitive and convenient tools for planning and layout, highlighting the practicability of the proposed multi-hazard risk assessment method.