Environmental risk assessment system for phosphogypsum tailing dams

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Risk Assessment
• Geotechnical Engineering

Background:

• Phosphogypsum tailing dams pose significant environmental risks.
• Existing assessment methods struggle with complex, non-quantitative data.
• Effective risk management is crucial for proposed, ongoing, and completed PG dams.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a new environmental risk assessment system for phosphogypsum tailing dams.
• To identify applicable environmental risk assessment methods considering pollution source characteristics and evaluation requirements.
• To provide a tool for ranking risk factors and informing decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Utilized analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for handling complexity and non-quantitative data.
• Employed fuzzy logic to manage environmental and uncertain data.
• Integrated AHP and fuzzy logic for a comprehensive risk assessment framework.

Main Results:

• Successfully ranked various risk factors based on their contribution to environmental risk.
• Enabled the calculation of relative priorities for different risk factors.
• Demonstrated the applicability of the assessment method for diverse PG tailing dam stages.

Conclusions:

• The new assessment system effectively addresses the complexities of environmental risk in phosphogypsum tailing dams.
• The method provides a quantitative basis for prioritizing management strategies.
• Environmental decision-makers can utilize this approach for improved management of PG tailing dams.