Methodological development of a probabilistic model for CO2 geological storage safety assessment

Abstract

In the framework of CO2 capture and geological storage, risk analysis plays an important role, because it is an essential requirement of knowledge to make up a local, national and supranational definition and planning of carbon injection strategies. This is because each project is at risk of failure. Even from the early stages, it should take into consideration the possible causes of this risk and propose corrective methods along the process, i.e., managing risk. Proper risk management reduces the negative consequences arising from the project. The main method of reduction or neutralizing of risk is mainly the identification, measurement and evaluation of it, together with the development of decision rules. This report presents a methodology developed for risk analysis and the results of its application. The risk assessment requires determination of the random variables that will influence the functioning of the system. It is very difficult to set-up a probability distribution of a random variable in the classical sense (objective probability) when a particular event rarely occurred or even it has an incomplete development. In this situation, we have to determine the subjective probability, especially at an early stage of projects, when we have not enough information about the system. This subjective probability is constructed from assessment of expert judgement to estimate the possibility of certain random events could happen depending on geological features of the area of application. The proposed methodology is based on the application of Bayesian probabilistic networks to estimate the probability of risk of leakage. These probabilistic networks can define graphically the relations of dependence between the variables and joint probability function through a local factorization of probability functions. © 2014 The Author(s).