Fuzzy-based risk prioritization for a hydrogen refueling facility in Malaysia

Hydrogen is starting to be mentioned as an alternative fuel to replace the fossil fuel in future transportation applications due to its characteristics of zero greenhouse gas emission and high energy efficiency. Before hydrogen fuel and its facilities can be introduced to the public, relevant safety issues and its hazards must be assessed in order to avoid any chance of injury or loss. While a traditional risk assessment has difficulty in prioritizing the risk of failure modes, this paper proposes a new fuzzy-based risk evaluation technique which uses fuzzy value to prioritize the risk of various scenarios. In this study, the final risk of each failure modes was prioritized by using the MATLAB fuzzy logic tool box with a combination of two assessments. The first assessment was concerned with the criteria which affected the actual probability of occurrence. This assessment considered the availability of the standard that was applied to prevent the likelihood of the scenario occurring. On the other hand, the second assessment was focused on evaluating the consequence of the failure by taking into account the availability of detection and the complexity of the failure rather than only the severity of the scenarios. A total of 87 failure scenarios were identified using failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA) procedures on hydrogen refueling station models. Fuzzy-based assessments were performed through risk prioritizing various failure scenarios with a fuzzy value (0 to 1) and risk level (low, medium, and high) while a traditional risk assessment approach presented the risks only in forms of level (low, medium, and/or high). Availability of the fuzzy value enabled further prioritizing on the risk results that fell in the same level of risk. This study concluded that fuzzy-based risk evaluation is able to further prioritize the decisions when compared with a traditional risk assessment method.