Coupling Analysis of Safety Influencing Factors in Subway Station Operation under a High-Pressure Gas Pipeline

A subway station’s operation is susceptible to accidents when there is a high-pressure gas pipeline overlaying it, and analyzing the correlations between the safety influencing factors (SIFs) in this operating situation can provide paths to reduce safety accidents. Thus, this paper investigated the coupling correlations between the SIFs. We firstly identified the SIFs during subway station operation under a high-pressure pipeline (SSOUHP) based on a literature review and discussion with experts. Then, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and coupling degree analysis (CDA) were combined to assess the coupling correlations between the SIFs, and Y subway station was selected to test the proposed hybrid coupling analysis approach. Research results show that (a) 23 second-level SIFs were identified and these SIFs can be summed up into five first-level SIFs, namely, human-related SIFs, pipeline-related SIFs, station-related SIFs, environment-related SIFs, and management-related SIFs; (b) the proposed hybrid approach can be used to evaluate the coupling correlations between SIFs; (c) of the coupling situations during Y subway station’s operation, the internal coupling correlations among environment-related SIFs, the coupling correlations between pipe-related SIFs and environment-related SIFs, and the coupling correlations among human-related SIFs, pipe-related SIFs, and environment-related SIFs are all greater than 1, and the coordination degree is 0.778, 0.781, and 0.783, respectively, which is a high security risk; (d) the overall coupling degree among all SIFs during Y subway station’s operation is 0.995 and the coordination degree is 0.809, which is a low safety risk. The research can enrich knowledge in the safety evaluation area, and provide a reference for onsite safety management. The results are basically consistent with the conclusion of the enterprise report, which verifies the scientificity and validity of the evaluation method.