Assessment and Ranking of Environmental Risk Generating Activities in Ahvaz Desalination Plant No.1 Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Environmental risk assessment studies are usually followed a specific process, including the identification of risks and the consequences of them, estimation and risk assessment, and suggested techniques to reduce the risk and its consequences. This study was carried out in 2016 to evaluate and ranking the environmental risk generating activities for desalination plant No.1 of Ahvaz in Karoon Oil and gas co-operation and in exploitation phase. In this study, identification of risks in the region based on field visits, interviews with factory and environmental experts, status report and Delphi method were performed. Then, the ranking of risk generating activities was done using AHP method. According to the Delphi method from 11 productive activity risks identified and 8 activities were identified as the final activities that these activities have generated the most risks in the plant. The data analysis according to the AHP method showed that the highest risk generating activities was the maintenance, transfer and injection of chemicals into reservoirs with the weight 0.244 and lowest risk related to rust operation with the weight 0.069. The final results showed that the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) can be use in prioritization the criteria and sub-criteria and increases its accuracy in estimating the ultimate level of risk.