Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal

Hazard and risk evaluation in hydrogen pipelines

H. Dagdougui E. Garbolino O. Paladino R. Sacile

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To cite this document:
H. Dagdougui E. Garbolino O. Paladino R. Sacile, (2010),"Hazard and risk evaluation in hydrogen
pipelines", Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 21 Iss 5 pp. 712 - 725
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MEQ
21,5

Hazard and risk evaluation in

hydrogen pipelines

712

Department of Communication, Computer and System Sciences (DIST),

University of Genova, Genova, Italy and
MINES ParisTech, CRC Centre for Research on Risk and Crises, Sophia
Antipolis, France

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H. Dagdougui

Received 15 November 2009

Revised 10 February 2010
Accepted 18 March 2010

E. Garbolino
MINES ParisTech, CRC Centre for Research on Risk and Crises,
Sophia Antipolis, France, and

O. Paladino and R. Sacile

Department of Communication, Computer and System Sciences (DIST),
University of Genova, Genova, Italy
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is the definition and the implementation of a simplified
mathematical model to estimate the hazard and the risk related to the use of high-pressurized
hydrogen pipeline.
Design/methodology/approach This study aims to investigate the effects of different hydrogen
operations conditions and to tackle with different release or failure scenarios. Based on the
combination of empirical relations and analytical models, this paper sets the basis for suitable models
for consequence analysis in terms of estimating fire length and of predicting its thermal radiation. The
results are compared either with experimental data available in the literature, thus by setting the same
operations and failure conditions, or with other conventional gaseous fuel currently used.
Findings The findings show that the release rate increasingly varies according to the supply
pressure. Regarding the effect of the hole diameter, it hugely affects the amount of hydrogen escaping
from the leak, up to a value of approximately 0.3 m, after which the release rate remains fixed at a
maximum of 43 Kg/s. For failure consequences related to jet flame, the leak dimension has a strength
impact on the flame length.
Originality/value This paper represents a helpful engineering tool, to establish the safety
requirements that are related to define adequate safety buffer zones for the hydrogen pipeline in order
to ensure safety to people, as well the environment.
Keywords Hydrogen, Hazards, Risk analysis, Safety
Paper type Research paper

Management of Environmental
Quality: An International Journal
Vol. 21 No. 5, 2010
pp. 712-725
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1477-7835
DOI 10.1108/14777831011067971

1. Introduction
Hydrogen has been often recognized as the likely energy carrier for the future energy
systems because it would represent the panacea of the growing concerns in
accordance with fossil-resource depletion, global warming, and increased air pollution.
The benefits are motivated by the fact that hydrogen can be manufactured from a
number of primary energy sources, such as natural gas, coal, biomass and water,
contributing towards greater energy safety and flexibility (Hugo et al., 2005).
Generally, hydrogen is produced, stored, and then transported to the end-users; in

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general, it must be transported from production plants to the storage or demand points,
so that, the delivery process of its supply chain brings new hazards exposures. Hence, a
safe and sustainable transition to the use of hydrogen requires that the safety issues
associated with the hydrogen have to be investigated and fully understood
(Venetsanos et al., 2003). The pathways involved between different supply chains
nodes are realized by a variety of delivery technologies. Among them, the pipeline has
proven to be one of the cheapest ways to transport hydrogen, especially for large areas
with large hydrogen demand (Yang and Ogden, 2007). About 630 miles of transmission
pipelines in the US transport hydrogen today, most of which are located in the Gulf
Coast region (DOE Pipeline Working Group Workshop, 2005). In addition, pipeline
compressed gas transportation provides an environmental friendly way to satisfy
demand, with zero greenhouse gas emissions. However, this infrastructure is often
exposed to interference from accidents, human errors, abnormal operations,
equipments failures, etc. So, it is more important to study the failure case linked to
the hydrogen compressed gas delivery or storage in order to evaluate the danger that
hydrogen accidents may cause. As reported by the h2 incidents database, the hydrogen
incidents may be due to the equipment failure, human errors, inadequate maintenance
and others (h2 incidents). Figure 1 shows the frequency of occurrence of the main
causes responsible for the hydrogen failure in the delivery infrastructure, among the
reported incidents that happen during the delivery, the occurrence of equipment failure
has the higher frequency.
The knowledge of the failure cases represents an important step in the phase of risk
evaluation. Modelling the failure of hydrogen storage or transportation devices could
offer a support for decisions makers to set up suitable safety standards as regards the
extent of the hazardous zone and their related risks. In the case of the occurrence of an
accidental leak, the outcomes may lead to fires and/or explosions that may affect
violently people, environment and properties. According to (Houf and Schefer, 2007),
these leaks range from small-diameter, slow release leaks from holes in delivery pipes
to larger, high-volume releases resulting from accidental break in the tubing from
high-pressure storage tanks. The area of hazard associated with the damage to people
will depend on the type of pipeline failure, time ignition, land cover and meteorological
conditions, ambient factors (open space/confined) ( Jo and Ahn, 2006). In addition, the

Hazard in
hydrogen
pipelines
713

Figure 1.
Histogram of the incidents
causes (equipment failure,
human errors, failure to
follow the standards
operation process (SOP),
vehicles collision and
others) in the case of
hydrogen delivery

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714

way in which an accidental release behaves, depends strongly on the layout, and size of
any hydrogen infrastructure (Tanaka et al., 2007). The lack of adequate maintenance,
system monitoring and oversight of maintenance of these facilities can contribute to
the ignition of a fire, which could be difficult to extinguish and represent severe danger
to the fire fighting personnel. British Gas concluded that leaks might propagate to
full-bore rupture if the ratio of opening stress to yield stress of a pipe is greater than
about 0.3 (Townsend and Fearnehough, 1986). Furthermore, according to the h2
incidents database (h2 incidents), about 84 per cent of the hydrogen incidents reported
in the delivery are mainly due to the release of the hydrogen substance from the
vehicle, 50 per cent of this percent will ignited once released. In brief, understanding
hydrogen behaviour during and after the unintended release is important for the
development of installations protocols and risk mitigation processes.
A wide range of models and approaches have been developed in the literature so to
predict the release failure, as well as to assess its consequences. Xua et al. (2009)
investigated numerical simulations of sudden direct release of pressurized hydrogen
into air; their study aims to capture the spontaneous ignition of the gas by the use of
computational fluid dynamics, and then to visualize the ignition mechanism when
pressurized hydrogen is released directly into an open ambient environment. An
analytical model has been developed by (Yan-Lei et al., 2009) for diffusion of high
pressured hydrogen due to storage tank failure; the authors studied the influence of
several important factors on the diffusion of hydrogen such as the wind speed, the
ambient temperature, the leaking position and others.
Under the framework of this paper, the main aim is to set up a simplified
mathematical model for a prompt assessment of the flow rate of hydrogen through a
sudden release from high-pressurized hydrogen pipeline. Basing on the combination of
empirical equations and analytical models, the current paper aims to suggest suitable
models for consequence analysis in term of estimating fire length and predicting its
thermal radiation. The results are then compared either with experimental data
available in the literature, or with other conventional gaseous fuel by setting same
operations and failure conditions.
2. Hazard modelling
2.1 Release
The mass flow rate of hydrogen escaped from a hole is determined according to two
flow conditions, which are chocked and non-choked (Montiel et al., 1998), so, the value
of flow rate at the hole will depend on whether the flow is sonic or subsonic. This will
be established by computing the critical pressure ratio.
In this study, the pressure at which the gas escapes from the hole is supposed to be
strictly higher than the critical pressure. For the case of hydrogen, the value of this
critical pressure is equal to 1.92 bar. Unlike the release in the hydrogen high-pressured
tank, which mainly depends on the stagnations conditions of the tank, the release rate
of high-pressurized hydrogen from a leak in the pipeline depends on the operating
pressure, the pipeline diameter and the length of pipeline from the supply point to the
failure point. Due to large differences between the pipeline and its outside ambient, the
flow conditions at the release become critical, so that a sonic flow will release from the
failure point, and then the flow rate of hydrogen can be estimated as:

QHole

Qh2s
Fc

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Where Qh2s is the peak initial release rate defined as follow (Crowl and Louvar, 2002):
v
"
#g1=g21
u
2 u
pD P l t
2

2
Qh2s
gr0 P 0 
4
g1
The term in the denominator of the QHole is due to the frictional loss in the pipeline and
it is determined using ( Jo and Ahn, 2003):
v
u
u
4l 2 f F LR
F c t1 
3
2= g21
D 2=g 1
P

Where F c -
is the term responsible for the loss of pressure inside the pipeline, DP m
is
the hole diameter, f F -
is the fanning friction factor, l-
is the dimensionless hole size
which is the ratio of the effective hole area to the pipe cross-sectional area, LR m
is the
distance from the hydrogen supply point to the failure occurrence, r0 [kg/m3] the
stagnation density of hydrogen gas at operating conditions, P 0 [Pa] is the stagnation
pressure of gas at operating conditions and g [-] is the specific heat ratio of gas, that is
equal to 1.41 for hydrogen gas.
Due to the length from the hydrogen supply source to the leak point in the pipeline
network, the pressure inside the pipe drops according to the condition of the interval
wall pipe. The frictional loss is due completely to the pipe friction, and it will depend on
the pipe length and roughness. According to (Jo and Ahn, 2006), the fanning friction is
supposed to be constant over the length of the pipeline, and it is equal underestimated
to a value of 0.0026 for steel pipeline. Several important factors could affect the
strength of the consequences in the case of failure occurrence, for instance:
.
pipeline operation conditions (pressure and temperature);
.
occurrence of failure at confined or unconfined space;
.
meteorological conditions (wind, temperature and humidity); and
.
position and dimension of the failure point.
During the current study, it is assumed that the pipeline operates in an unconfined
space, so, in case of failure, hydrogen will be released in an open space. Moreover, it is
worth to mention that in the framework of this study, the meteorological conditions
will not be taken into account and the accidental jet fire scenario will be the one
evaluated in terms of thermal radiation and damage caused. Figure 2 is used to show
different accident scenarios that can come from a high-pressurized hydrogen pipeline.
During this current study (see Figure 2).
2.2 Jet flame length
The geometry of jet fire is an important parameter in the consequence analysis, since it
allows the prediction of the safety distance that must be kept in order to minimize the
individual and the environmental risks, and it also constitutes fundamental

Hazard in
hydrogen
pipelines
715

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716
Figure 2.
Diagram of hydrogen
accidental scenarios

information for hazard analysis. The length of the jet flame is the dominant feature to
be known in order to simulate the possibility of the flame impingement on nearby
facilities (Bagster and Schubacht, 1996).
As the compressed hydrogen is abruptly released into air, the chocked release is
generated ahead of the under-expanded jet. The pressure will drop gradually until the
ambient pressure value. Several studies in the literature have defined many
mathematical models to compute the length of the flame, (Delichatsios, 1993) developed
an equation based on the non-dimensional Froude number that measures the ratio of
buoyancy-t-momentum forces in jet flames. In another study, Mogi and Horiguchi
(2009) have done experimental investigations, according to the authors, the flame
length is proportional to 0.53 power of the mass flow rate, thus for an operating
pressure up to 0.1 MPa. This equation is valid for the case of high-pressurized
hydrogen tank. So, due to the high operating pressure of pipeline, the second empirical
relationship developed by Mogi and Horiguchi (2009) will be adopted in this study. It
has been considered that the pipeline operates as a tank or, in others words; the
dimension of the hole is very small comparing to the dimension of the pipe. The flame
length is expressed as:
0:53
Lf 20:3Qm

where Lf m
is the length of the flame and Qm kg=s
is the mass flow rate of hydrogen.
2.3 Thermal effect from jet fire
Due to the large pressure ratio between the pipeline and the outside environment at
atmospheric pressure, critical conditions occur at the leak. The flow becomes sonic in a
very small leak dimension. So, the total energy released into the ambient becomes
higher, inducing then a thermal radiation that can exceed many GW by surface
(Wilkening and Baraldi, 2007).
In order to compute the thermal radiation from the jet fire, the flame jet could be
idealized as point source heat emitters spread along the flame envelope. The total heat
flux reaching a given point is obtained by summing the radiation received from each
point source emitter. One simplified assumption that could be incorporated in the
computation of the thermal radiation is to collapse the set of heat emitters into a single
point source emitter, located in the ground level (Quaranta et al., 2002). Even if the
implemented model induces some errors in the heat flux, it is preferred to many others

since, first, it avoids the tedious calculation of the heat flux of each axial position of the
flame, and second, it incorporates many parameters that can play a paramount role in
real jet fire events, for instance, those responsible for the gas/air combustion (H c ). The
thermal radiation from the flame is inversely proportional to the square of the distance.
It can be estimated as suggested in (API RP 521, 1990):

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hta Qeff H c
4pr 2

Hazard in
hydrogen
pipelines
717

Where h-
is the combustion efficiency factor ( 0.15 for H2 and 0.2 for CH4), Hc [J/kg]
is the heat of combustion ( 141.80MJ/kg for H2 and 55.50MJ/kg for CH4), ta -
is the
emissivity factor ( 1 for H2 gas and 0.2 for CH4 gas); it is defined as the fraction of the
total chemical heat release that is radiated to the surroundings, Qeff kg=s
is the
effective gas release rate and rm
is the radial distance from heat source (flame) to the
location of interest (see Figure 3).
The effective hydrogen release rate reflects a representative steady-state
approximation to the actual release rate. It can be approximated using the following
formula:
Qeff CQh2s

where C is the decay factor, it reflects the tendency at which the released hydrogen flow
rate lose its effectiveness, In others words, the decay factor describes the variation in
pressure between the atmospheric pressure and the pressure inside the pipe just before
escaping from the leak. (Hill and Catmur, 1994) quote a value of 0.25 for the decay
factor.
3. Risk evaluation
The combination of hazardous release, and jet flame associated with high-pressure
hydrogen pipeline operations, are drastically encountered with higher fatalities. Since
many decades, different methods have been developed to make a better understanding
of the hazard, and then set up efficient models for risks assessment on human life and
on the environment. The aim of consequence analysis is to determine the failure case,
and then to identify its damage. Hydrogen is a flammable gas, so, the consequence of
fire is almost present, and may specifically result in damages caused by thermal

Figure 3.
System under study

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718

radiation. Once the gas is escaping from the leak, it is ignited and a jet of flame is
created in the air; the heat radiated from the flame may be significant. According to the
h2 Incidents report, many hydrogen failures in the phase of the delivery affect human
life, damage the properties in neighbourhood and create others injuries. A statistical
analysis has been done on the h2 incidents report (h2 incidents) so to evaluate the
consequences of hydrogen failure in the delivery. Results are summarized in Figure 4.
It can be depicted that property damages are the one that have the higher percentage
(39 per cent).
The consequence modelling consists in simulating the behaviour of the release of
hazardous substances and the impact of such events on receptors (individuals,
buildings, and environment). The damage caused by the pipeline failures can be
determined using the following formula (Gerboni and Salvador, 2009):
Dam Dp AV c

Where Dam: [the number of facilities/event] is the damage, Dp [persons/km2] is the

population density, V c -
is the vulnerability coefficient, (it means the number of people
who die because of the accident event. According to (Mannan, 2005), the value of the
vulnerability is taken equal to 5 per cent), A [m2] is the area in vicinity of the pipeline
involved in the accident. It is related to the radial distance from the failure point by
pr 2 .
The quantitative risk evaluation is a crucial phase in studying the feasibility
implementation of a new infrastructure. So, it answers the questions related to the
acceptability by national/regional and local scales authorities. In order to compute the
value of risk, the frequency of the failure event is estimated to be equal to 5.102 6.
Generally, the risk of a specified failure can be summarized in the following formula:
Risk probability adverse consequences
The probability expresses the frequency of occurrence of the event or of the failure ( jet
fire, explosion, flash fire . . .). This information is usually recorded according to the data
accumulated during the infrastructure operating, so, in order to have the knowledge of
this information, statistical analysis must be done on the raw data. Whereas, the
adverse consequence depicts the damage related to the number of people harmed,
goods destruction and others.
4. Results and discussions
Numerical simulations have been carried out so to depict the effect of the dimensionless
hole size on the flow rate of hydrogen released. It is assumed that the length at which
the failure occurs is 5,00 m far from the hydrogen supply point. Figure 5 shows that the
release rate varies increasingly according to the pressure for different values of l

Figure 4.
Pie bars of the damages
and injuries due to the
hydrogen failure in the
delivery mode

Hazard in
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pipelines

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719
Figure 5.
The variation of the
release flow rate of
hydrogen versus the
pressure at the supply
point for different values
of l

ranged between 0.0252 and 0.04. As l increases, this variation tends to have a constant
shape for higher values of the dimensionless hole size.
In order to highlight the relationship between the hole diameter and the hydrogen
release rate so to better understand the results of Figures 5 and 6 has been
introduced. It appears that the hole diameter from which hydrogen gas is escaped
hugely affects the amount of hydrogen released from the leak, up to a value of
approximately 0.3 m; after which the release rate remains fixed at a maximum of
43 Kg/s. The stagnation of the release rate for the higher values of the leak diameter is
due to the fact that the release cannot exceed the maximum rate that can flow in the
pipeline. This is in perfect agreement with the method proposed by (Yuhu et al., 2003).

Figure 6.
Relationship between the
hole diameter and release
rate

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720

Figure 7.
The jet flame length as
function of the pressure at
the supply point

Figure 7 shows the trend of the hydrogen flame length as a function of the stagnation
pressure at the hydrogen supply point; the curve displays this variation for various
values of leaks diameters. The data obtained for the flame length are valid for a value
of operation pressure higher than 0.1 MPa. By analyzing Figure 7, it can be seen that
increasing the value of the supply pressure does not have a drastic impact on the flame
dimension for a small value of the leak diameter. For instance, a value of 10 m for the
flame length is observed for a leak diameter of 10 mm, this value of the flame length
remains constant for different values of the hydrogen pressurized supply point. This
trend will change gradually as we increase the value of dh . However, enhancing the
pressure will in turn increase the value of the flame length, for example, for a leak
diameter equal to 79 mm, the hydrogen flame length can have 50 m for P0 5 MPa to
attain a value of 117 m for P0 100 MPa. The observed behavior is due to the fact that
increasing the diameter of the hole, the hydrogen mass released will increase, inducing
then, a higher jet velocity, which enhances the flame length, but, once the maximum
flow rate that can release is reached, this increasing behavior of the flame stops.
Computational results have been also compared with those reported by (Mogi and
Horiguchi, 2009). Figure 8 shows this comparison for same values of pressure and leak
diameter. It appears that there is a slightly over-prediction using the flame length
model for the pipeline. For instance, a value of 0.802 m is obtained using the current
model, instead of a 0.6 m for experimental data. This difference could be justified by
the fact that the mass flow rate used in the pipeline formulation suppose the pipeline as
tank, furthermore, it does not take into account the contact between the released
hydrogen and the outside meteorological conditions.
The characterization of the thermal radiation from the jet flame is a crucial part to
assess the consequence of the pipeline failure; also, it constitutes an important task to
develop new safety codes, and to have an exact knowledge on the suitable places where
the thermal sensors should be placed to detect hydrogen gas releases. In this

Hazard in
hydrogen
pipelines

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721

Figure 8.
Comparison of the current
model and experiments by
T. Mogi and S. Horiguchi
of the jet length

framework, it is expected that the downstream region from the hydrogen jet flame is
particularly susceptible to thermal hazards. This hazard is shown in term of the thermal
radiation or heat flux in Figure 9. It shows the variation of the thermal radiation as a
function of the radial distance (from the centered flame point to the location of interest).
For a radial distance, less than approximately 7 m, the values of the thermal radiation of
the hydrogen gas are higher, than those obtained for the methane gas. For instance, the
thermal radiation for hydrogen is equal to 4,761.33 W/m2 versus a value of 2,025 W/m2,
for the methane gas, thus for P0 20.7 MPa this is mainly due to the fact of a higher

Figure 9.
The heat flux from the
hydrogen jet flame as a
function of the radial
distance

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722

energy content of hydrogen compared with methane. On the other hand, for a radial
distance higher than 7 m, the thermal radiation retains a constant value, either for
pressure equal to 207 bar or 0.5 bar. The remark may be due to the dissipation of the
thermal radiation faraway from the flame-centered point.
Based on the mathematical analysis of the pipeline network has been done,
consequences of failures may be estimated. By determining the hazard linked to
manipulating hydrogen gaseous substance, the decisions makers might take suitable
measures regarding the safety issues. Hereinafter, the application of quantitative risk
analysis is briefly discussed. Table I depicts that the quantitative value of the damage
caused by the pipeline failure increases with the type of the population living in
proximity of the infrastructure. Thus, by characterizing the risk according to the
population surrounding the pipeline infrastructure, this will bring important
knowledge about the societal risk acceptance criteria.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, an approach to assess the thermal hazard related to the release of
hydrogen high pressure from a pressurized pipeline has been proposed. The failure
case of hydrogen transmission pipeline can lead to outcomes that can cause serious
damage in the immediate vicinity of the failure point. However, a good knowledge of
these dangers and their consequences is intended to implement a safe design of
systems using hydrogen. In these conditions, it is possible to envisage the development
of hydrogen as an energy carrier with a low risk level socially acceptable. The model
settled in this paper aims to estimate the hydrogen flow rate that release from the
leakage, the length of the ignited flame gas as well as the thermal radiation. The study
includes also a risk analysis for damaged areas assessment, thus, taking into account
the density of the population that lives in the vicinity. In this respect, a promising
future development may be included to the overall resulting model as a specific add-on
of classical geographic information system software for the assessment of the risk in
hydrogen pipeline planning.

Large population Dpop 20,000

(persons/Km2)

Medium population
Dpop 12,000 (persons/Km2)
Table I.
Thermal radiation and
damages as function of
the radial distance from
the failure point, for large;
medium and small
population

Low population Dpop 1,500

(person/Km2)

The radial distance from

the failure (m)

Thermal
radiation (W/m2)

Damage
(fatalities/event)

159,735

0.0003

6
16
36
1

4,437
624
124
159,735

0.1130
0.8038
4.0694
0.0002

6
16
36
1

4,437
624
124
159,735

0.0068
0.4823
2.4417
0.00024

6
16
36

4,437
624
124

0.00848
0.06023
0.305

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Further reading
Jo, Y.D. and Ahn, B.J. (2002), Analysis of hazard areas associated with high-pressure natural gas
pipelines, Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process industries, Vol. 15, pp. 179-88.
US Department of Energy (n.d.), Hydrogen Program, H2 Incidents Reporting and Lessons
Learned, US Department of Energy, Washington, DC, available at: http://h2incidents.org/

About the authors

H. Dagdougui is a PhD candidate on System Monitoring and Environmental Risk Management
at DIST-Department of System, Computer and Communication at University of Genoa and at
Mines Paris-Tech in the framework of Convention for International joint Doctorate Supervision.
She is specialized in the development of methods and strategies for future hydrogen
infrastructures, also risk assessment for hydrogen manipulation. She is an expert in modelling
hydrogen production systems via renewable energy and hydrogen supply demand for refuelling
stations. She is author and co-author of three publications on international/national refereed
journals and conference proceedings. Hanane Dagdougui is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: hanane.dagdougui@unige.it
E. Garbolino is a Lecturer and Researcher at the Crisis and Risk Research Centre (CRC),
MINES ParisTech (France), and has been since 2002. He holds a Masters degree in Ecology (in
1997) at the University of Marseille and a PhD in geography (in 2001) at the University of Nice
Sophia Antipolis. His research is mainly dedicated to the definition and the implementation of
spatial decision support systems for private or public decision makers with regard to natural,
industrial, and technological risks. He has also published books and papers on risk prevention
policy and its organization based on the concept of defense in depth, the role of feedback
experience to promote and improve the safety culture in the organizations, and the definition of
dynamic risk assessment methodologies based on the system dynamics approach.
O. Paladino is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Genova
and chairperson of the Council for the Environmental Engineering Degree Courses (BSc and
MSc) at the University of Genova. She is an expert on identification of industrial and man-made
hazards by means of dynamic modelling of reactive chemicals, field data analysis and pollutant
sources identification; evaluation of both outdoor and indoor environmental and human health
risk. She is also an expert on reduction of industrial and man-made hazards by process
optimization, on-line fault diagnosis and control of chemical plants; solid-waste and wastewater
management, remediation techniques.

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R. Sacile is an Assistant Professor at the University of Genova, Italy, where, since 2000, he
has held the Professorships of Geographic Information Systems and Models and Methods for the
Management of Environmental Systems. He earned his Italian Laurea in Electronic Engineering
in 1990 from University of Genova, Italy, and his PhD in 1994 from Politecnico of Milan, Italy.
Since 2003, he has been responsible for a research contract between Eni group, the most
important Italian petrol chemical company, and University of Genova on different aspects
concerning hazardous material transport. Since 2006, he has been a member of the NATO
Environmental Security Panel. His main research interests are related to computer based and
decision support methodologies and their integration within an information system, with specific
applications to the environmental and transport fields. His research has appeared in journals
such as: Decision Support Systems, Energy, Journal of Cleaner Production, Environmental
Modelling & Software, Resources, Cconservation and Recycling and Waste Management.

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1. P.H.C. Lins, A.T. de Almeida. 2012. Multidimensional risk analysis of hydrogen pipelines. International
Journal of Hydrogen Energy 37:18, 13545-13554. [CrossRef]