Land‐use planning risk estimates for a chemical industrial park in China – A longitudinal study

Abstract

A chemical industrial park (CIP) can centralize the management of companies and facilitate mutual communication between different businesses. Due to these advantages, an increasing number of chemical companies are forced into CIP, especially in developing countries such as China. Thus, the land‐use planning of CIP associated with safety becomes an important issue. To illustrate the importance of the continuous risk supervision and give more experiences to other similar changing CIP, we apply a simplified quantitative risk assessment procedure to estimate the risk to a Chinese chemical industrial park (19 × 10 km2) near a rather densely populated off‐site region for the years 2014 and 2017. Estimated levels of individual risk and societal risk are compared with Chinese risk acceptance criteria for land‐use planning. Off‐site risk levels have increased significantly from 2014 to 2017. While off‐site risk levels are still low and within the acceptable region, the study concludes that the authorities should review carefully and monitor the risk level in case of future development activities around and within the chemical industrial park, e.g. preserving a buffer zone should be considered. For future chemical park design, it is highly recommended to proactively include QRA analysis especially to deal with risk in an efficient way. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 37: 124–133, 2018