Bridging The Gap Between Risk Assessment And Land-Use Planning

The issue of effective land use planning around planned or existing industrial establishments with potential for major accidents involving hazardous substances is explained in a detail. The domains of process safety risk assessment and spatial/land use planning procedures, policies and levels are discussed at suitable level of details in order to demonstrate existing processes, procedures and pertaining uncertainties. Next, typical current approaches to incorporate risk assessment's results into land use planning process are discussed with emphasis on their difficulties and shortcomings. Considering levels of spatial planning for new establishments (new developments), the modifications of both risk assessment methodologies and spatial planning process are suggested in order to bridge the gap between both domains. First, risk assessment methodologies should provide information about suitable separation distances through threat index, explicitly considering vulnerability of the surroundings of the hazardous industrial establishment and also threat tolerability criteria set. Second, spatial/land use planning process should be revised in order to add additional iterations in the planning at various levels each considering available information about risks/threats anticipated or assessed (related to the levels of technical data about planned development/investment). Among other things, the approach and method elaborated succeeded in integration of two domains related to risk informed land use planning. The approach asks for interaction of different technical backgrounds, methods and approaches in terms of incorporation of technical risks/threats as integrative component into spatial/land use planning process.