A method for na-tech risk assessment as supporting tool for land use planning mitigation strategies

Abstract

Hazardous industrial sites have always represented a threat for the community often provoking major accidents overcoming the boundaries of the plants and affecting the surrounding urban areas. If the industrial sites are located in natural hazard-prone areas, technological accidents may be triggered by natural events, generating so-called na-tech events which may modify and increase the impact and the overall damage in the areas around them. Nevertheless, natural and technological hazards are still treated as two separate issues, and up to now the methods for na-tech risk assessment have been developed mainly for specific natural hazards, generally restricted to some plant typologies and to the area of the plant itself. Based on a review of the current na-tech literature, this article illustrates a risk assessment method as a supporting tool for land use planning strategies aimed at reducing na-tech risk in urban areas. More specifically, a multi attribute decision-making method, combined with fuzzy techniques, has been developed. The method allows planners to take into account, according to different territorial units, all the individual na-tech risk factors, measured through both quantitative and qualitative parameters, while providing them with a na-tech risk index, useful to rank the territorial units and to single out the priority intervention areas. The method is designed to process information generally available about hazardous plants (safety reports), natural hazards (hazard maps) and features of urban systems mainly influencing their exposure and vulnerability to na-tech events (common statistical territorial data). Furthermore, the method implemented into a GIS framework should easily provide planners with comparable maps to figure out the hazard factors and the main territorial features influencing the exposure and vulnerability of urban systems to na-tech events. The method has been tested on a middle-sized Municipality in the Campania Region, identified as 2nd class seismic zone, according to the Ordinance 3274/2003, in which a LPG storage plant, classified as a plant with major accident potential by the Seveso II Directive (art. 9), is located just within the city core

Cascading Events, Technology and the Floods Directive: future challenges

“…When it clashed with the rigidities accumulated in CI, like the lack of preparedness, a full cascade escalated in society [23]; -vulnerability to NaTech escalation. Flooding events on industrial sites located in naturally hazard-prone areas may be powerful triggers for technological accidents, modifying and increasing consequences and damages in the surrounding areas [56,57]. Those dimensions are probably not exhaustive and they are likely to be conditioned by the limited information available.…”

“…If industrial sites are located in naturally hazard-prone areas, technological accidents may be triggered by natural happenings, which could generate NaTech disasters (Natural events triggering Technological Disasters). Such accidents can modify and increase the impact and the overall damages in the surrounding areas [56,57,58,59].…”

Definition of a shortcut methodology for assessing flood-related Na-Tech risk

“…If industrial sites are located in naturally hazard-prone areas, technological accidents may be triggered by natural events, which could generate the so-called NaTech (Natural and Technological) events and may modify as well as increase the impact and overall damage in surrounding areas (Galderisi et al, 2008).…”

“…In addition, natural disasters have increased both in frequency and economic losses around the world (Young et al, 2004); therefore, there is increasing public awareness and interest from the scientific community . Recent examples of Na-Tech events are reported in the literature Cruz and Krausmann, 2009;Cruz and Okada, 2008;Picou, 2009), but only a few papers discuss approaches and methodologies necessary to face the problems they cause (Cozzani et al, 2006;Cruz and Okada, 2008;Fendler, 2008;Galderisi et al, 2008;Krausmann and Mushtaq, 2008).…”

Investigations on natural hazards which trigger technological disasters in Romania

“…Also, the experts in the field of natural disaster risk reduction must work together with those involved in technological risk management. It is necessary to share knowledge in the field of both natural and technological risk assessment and management (Galderisi et al, 2008).…”