Assessment of Petrol Filling Stations Hazards Risk in Abu Dhabi, UAE - GIS Applications

Abstract

Abstract In the emirate of Abu Dhabi, the transportation vehicle is growing at rapid rate every year which in turn increase the requirement of the petrol filling stations (PFS). This growth rate plays a major role in increasing the fire and explosion hazards risk than ever before. When the fuel is not handled safely, it has the potential to cause not only a serious fire and/or explosion hazard and also harmful to health which can cause damage to skin, eyes on contact, dizziness and respiratory problems, if it is inhaled. Hence, petrol storage and operation is controlled by legislation, guidelines and standards all over the world. With this in mind, an attempt has been made to identify the PFS hazards risk in the capital city of UAE using various international guidelines and standards. Land use and Land cover is prepared for Abu Dhabi using Landsat 8, 2017 data to demarcate the highly urbanized area within the emirate where Abu Dhabi city is chosen for the study. The planning criteria for location, guidance for establishment, planning policy, legislation, published reports from the regulatory reforms & association and literatures from various developed and developing countries are studied to identify the most important risk parameters associated with PFS for analysis and inference. The thematic maps are prepared based on the minimum requirement mentioned in the guidelines & standards which are proximity to the road, sight distance, distance limitation between two stations, if the stations are located within the same cadastral unit & different cadastral areas, staggered length if the two stations are opposite to each other, distance to residential buildings and distance to vulnerable places such as prayer halls, libraries, markets, hospitals, schools, higher education, banks, shopping malls, post office, public play grounds, recreational areas and fire brigade. The potential hazards of each filling stations are estimated by assessing both refueling services and the other related internal hazardous activities such as availability of LPG storage area, cooking facility, oil change, car care (automatic and manual) car wash which is then categorized into 7 types. ArcGIS 10.1 acts as a powerful spatial analysis tool to find out the hazards risk in the PFS by means of weighted overlay analysis. Each individual parameter of the thematic map is ranked and weighted in accordance with their compliance with the international legislation & regulations. The real risk associated with each station are classified viz., High, medium, low and no violation with its identification numbers respectively. The outcome of this research helps local authorities in terms of land management, so that necessary measures can be established around PFS which are operated under high risk.