Social and economic risk analysis of natural gas distribution networks

The continuity of service as well as with its safety and security represent a crucial issue for natural gas transmission and distribution networks and a detailed analysis of the associated risks is essential to increase their reliability. In particular, natural gas distribution networks are characterised by a high number of users and present a very complex structure (with nodes and stretches and presenting mixed typologies, e.g., point to point, star, meshed) which make often difficult to forecast the effects of localised failure events, especially by a social and economic point of view. In this work, the authors develop a methodology for the analysis of the economic and social risk associated with natural gas distribution network failures and for the quantification of the related consequences on residential, commercial and/or industrial users. To this aim, the authors present and discuss the case study represented by a city distribution network located in southern Italy. The results demonstrate the developed method is effective in identifying the structural criticalities of the network, allowing the quick detection of the most critical areas affected by significant risk of service disruption.