Model of safety investment optimization in chemical industrial parks based on system dynamics

Chemical industrial parks (CIPs) are faced with extremely high safety risks due to their complex production process and environment. The key to enhancing safety in these parks, lies in maximizing the safety level improvement with limited safety investment. Traditional methods have defects in the quantitation and dynamic control and prediction of safety investment in CIPs. Aiming at determining the strategy of safety investment optimization in CIPs, a system dynamics (SD) model of safety investment optimization was proposed in this study. Based on 203 major accidents that occurred in CIPs from 2000 to 2023, the key causes of accidents were identified and safety investment tailored to these key causes were obtained. Subsequently, an SD model was developed to derive an optimized strategy of safety investment in CIPs with the aid of the three-step simulation method. The results demonstrate that safety management has the greatest impact on the safety and economic system of CIPs, followed by safety training, safety protection, and safety assessment. The shorter the expected time to reach a certain safety level, the higher the minimum initial total safety investment required. Furthermore, a case study was conducted on a provincial CIP to verify feasibility of the proposed model.