15 November 2015 Ruud Houdijk

Working on an article for the 15th International Symposium on Loss Prevention

External safety from the perspective of public “all hazard” risk management: lessons on spatial planning for rail transport of hazardous substances

In June 2016 the 15th International Symposium on Loss Prevention and Safety Promotion in the Process Industries will be organized in Freiburg, Germany. I have submitted an abstract for an article concerning the EU PRISMA project. As the abstract has been accepted I will be working on the paper this shortly, in the hope it will be published in the CET journal “Chemical Engineering Transactions”. Exciting stuff! It is not my first article in a journal, but the first time it will be subject to a formal review process with 3 peers.

Within the EU risk management regarding SEVESO industries and transport of hazardous substances is becoming more and more an integral part of a governmental “all hazard” approach. The EU has an active policy to encourage Member States in building transparent and integrated risk management processes, both at national and local level. The central paradigm is integrated assessment and integral resilience building for all kinds of hazards: from floods to disruption of critical infrastructures, from social unrest to pandemic zoonosis, from extreme weather to industrial accidents. In these risk management processes the involvement of stakeholders from all relevant sectors is crucial, in order to analyze interdependencies and cascade effects and to increase support for intersectorial safety policies. The EU therefore aims at cooperation across sectorial and administrative borders, trying to involve public entities on all levels, critical infrastructures, different kinds of ‘private risk sources’ and, last but not least, the general population. However, at the same time the interconnection of all hazard risk management with spatial planning – and for that matter, also with environmental protection policy – remains a daunting quest.

From 2010 till 2014 local and regional governments from The Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia and Greece have cooperated in the EU projects MiSRaR and PRISMA. The aim of MiSRaR was to exchange knowledge on spatial risk mitigation, including methods for risk assessment, capability planning and stakeholder involvement. The shared insights have been compiled into the practical, non-technical MiSRaR handbook, aimed to help local governments to develop risk management processes. In PRISMA these lessons have been simultaneously tested on external safety, fire safety and wild fires, with the project partners learning from each other’s experiences with the risk management process. For the Safety Region South-Holland South (The Netherlands), lead partner in both projects, the test case was rail transport of hazardous substances in the Kijfhoek-Dordrecht area, the most busy “transport hub” in Western Europe.

The experiences of South-Holland South are a showcase for the EU-wide lessons on connecting risk management with spatial planning. The risk of rail transport and the potential safety policies were assessed, using on the one hand the Dutch legal framework for external safety and on the other hand the Dutch methodology for all hazard risk assessment. The comparison resulted in remarkable conclusions. The risk calculations of the legal framework, focused on fatal casualties, resulted in a limited zone in which expensive measures are required. With the all hazard methodology the assessment was broadened to all kinds of impacts, including physical, economical, ecological and social effects. Using event tree analysis for all these impacts, a broad set of potential mitigation options was identified. A preliminary societal cost-benefit analysis indicated that also cheaper safety measures in a much larger zone could be advisable, such as remote control of mechanical ventilation of houses. In the end a whole different approach towards spatial safety came into view, aimed at correlating spatial zones with the cost-benefit ratio of measures for different scenarios, from an “all hazard” and “all impact” perspective.

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