AHP Analysis of Oil Refinery Safety Factors and Prevention Strategies: A Case Study of the 2005 BP Texas City Refinery Incident (Math Problem Sample)

Factors Table Factors Table Pair-wise matrix comparison for the criteria -6095-14181 Priority Vectors -6095-14206 Weighted sum values These weighted ratings represent the overall importance or priority of each row (criteria) based on the pairwise comparisons and the calculated priority vector. Student's Name: Institution: Course: I have read the article and also watched the video on the TB Texas Refinery incident in 2005. The catastrophic explosion resulted in resulted in 15 fatalities and 180 injuries. This tragic event highlighted the inherent risks associated with oil refineries and the importance of effective safety measures. In this assignment, I will apply the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate potential factors contributing to oil fires in refineries. I will consider four criteria: human factors, management factors, technical factors, and safety systems. I will then attempt to analyze three possible alternatives, namely improved training programs, stricter management of change procedures, and enhanced safety barrier systems that can be employed to mitigate similar strategies in the future. Fundamentally, I will adopt the pairwise comparisons technique to calculate priority vectors, weighted sum values, and consistency ratios. This structured decision-making process can provide valuable insights for prioritizing safety measures and preventing incidents like the BP Texas Refinery explosion. The assignment is divided into three major parts. Part one dwells on the criteria, while the subsequent section analyzes the alternatives. The last part juxtaposes the weights of the criteria and the scores of the alternatives to rank the most effective preventive measure. Part One: Criteria 72847236809 207873636809 Table 1 shows four criteria and three alternatives that I will use to analyze the key factors that contributed to the BP Texas Refinery incident. Human Factors Improve Training and Supervision Management of Change (MOC) Strengthen MOC Procedures Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA) Enhance PHA Implementation Criteria Alternative Safety Barriers The matrix is a simple tool that offers me a framework for testing consistency, obtaining additional information through making all possible comparisons, and analyzing the sensitivity of overall priorities to changes in judgment. The next step after I form the matrices is to derive the relative weights for the various elements. My integration process involves the evaluation of the so-called vector priorities (VP or eigenvectors) that designate the relative ranking of the dependent decision attributes for the objective in scope. Table 2 shows a pairwise comparison matrix of criteria using the importance level table Human factors 1.000 0.333 0.200 0.143 Management of Change (MOC) 3.000 1.000 0.333 0.200 Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA) 5.000 3.000 1.000 0.333 Criteria Human factors Management of Change (MOC)Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA)Safety Barriers Safety Barriers 7.0005.0003.0001.000 This section comprises the process of computing the priority vectors. The first step is to sum the values in each column of the matrix in Table 2. Subsequently, each element of the matrix is divided by its column’s total to obtain the normalized matrix. The final step involves finding the average of the elements per row of the results in step 2 above. The obtained values constitute the priority vectors. In other words, I need to normalize the columns so that the sum of all column values becomes 1. I do so by first calculating the sum of a column's cell values and then dividing each cell value of that column by that sum. The results of this division are shown in Table 4. Table 4. Normalized comparison matrix data Table 3: Calculating the sum of the columns Human factors 1.0000.333 0.200 0.143 Criteria Management of Change (MOC) 3.0001.000 0.333 0.200 Human factors 0.063 0.036 0.044 0.085 Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA) 5.0003.000 1.000 0.333 Management of Change (MOC) 0.188 0.107 0.074 0.119 Safety Barriers 7.0005.000 3.000 1.000 Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA) 0.313 0.321 0.221 0.199 Criteria Human factors Management of Change (MOC)Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA)Safety Barriers Column1Column2Column3Column4Column5 Total 16.0009.3334.5331.676Safety Barriers 0.4380.5360.6620.597 144322834925 Table 5 summarizes the priority vectors obtained by averaging the values in the normalized matrix Table Human factors 0.063 0.036 0.044 0.085 0.057 0.122 0.263 0.558 Management of Change (MOC) 0.188 0.107 0.074 0.119 Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA) 0.313 0.321 0.221 0.199 Safety Barriers 0.438 0.536 0.662 0.597 Criteria Human factors Management of Change (MOC)Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA)Safety Barriers Priority vectors Total 1.000 125730034586 Table 6: This section covers the process of obtaining the weighted sum values. The priority vectors is multiplied by rows of the pairwise comparison matrix. Criteria Human factors Human factors Management of Change (MOC) 1.000 Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA)Safety Barriers 0.3330.200 0.14 0.230 0.492 1.099 2.356 Management of Change (MOC) 3.000 1.0000.333 0.200 Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA) 5.000 3.0001.000 0.333 Safety Barriers 7.000 5.0003.000 1.000 491032882529The weighted value are computed using the mmult excel function The weighted value are computed ...