A Novel Probabilistic Safety Risk Assessment Approach Near Transmission Line Structures Under Fault Conditions

The increasing proximity of transmission lines to urban areas has raised safety concerns due to potential touch and step voltage hazards during transmission line faults. Lacking of a comprehensive safety standard in many regions makes the situation worse. Although both deterministic and probabilistic risk assessment approaches have been attempted for this issue, the probabilistic risk assessment approach has attracted more attention, as it allows electric utilities with a limited operational budget to quantify and prioritize risk locations by mitigating the public risk for a location with the highest probability first through a risk score. However, the parameters of the probabilistic risk assessment approach are currently based on assumptions, which significantly reduces the risk assessment accuracy. In this paper, new effective methods are proposed to accurately determine these parameters, including the probability of faults, the probability of human presence, and the probability of ventricular fibrillation. This paper offers an accurate probabilistic risk assessment tool for electric utilities and regulatory bodies to proactively assess and mitigate safety risks near transmission line structures and ensure the public's safety in an increasingly urbanized landscape.