Seveso Sites Research Articles

Providing an Integrated Vulnerability Assessment Indicator System (VAIS) to Measure the Spatial Vulnerability of Areas near Seveso Establishments in Thessaloniki (Greece)

The most efficient way to reduce damage and losses in metropolitan areas with complex functions that are exposed to disaster risks is to reduce their vulnerability, which necessitates an assessment of the urban system’s vulnerability. Regarding the areas located near Seveso establishments, they are characterized by high levels of vulnerability, both spatially and sectorally, as they present an increased risk due to the possible occurrence of large-scale industrial accidents. In this study, a vulnerability assessment indicator system (VAIS) that assesses the vulnerability presented in the areas located near Seveso facilities was proposed. The VAIS consisted of social, environmental and spatial indicators, and an assessment of the indicators was carried out by collecting the appropriate data. The study area is located in the western part of Thessaloniki and includes the Seveso site and the adjacent municipal districts. Prioritization of the examined municipal districts based on their overall vulnerability was carried out using multicriteria analysis methods. The results showed that there was a convergence among the three categories of vulnerability (social, environmental and spatial) in the areas that presented the highest vulnerability. The MD of Kalochori (MD7) was the most vulnerable MD in the study, while the less vulnerable ones varied depending on the vulnerability category (social, environmental or spatial) considered each time. The proposed methodology may prove to be a highly useful tool in decision-making processes when used by the relevant authorities who are qualified to define and implement a site-specific security management system.

Risk assessment for handling hazardous substances within the European industry: Available methodologies and research streams.

After the Seveso disaster occurred more than 40 years ago, there has been an increasing awareness of the potential impacts that similar accident events can occur in a wide range of process establishments, where the handling and production of hazardous substances pose a real threat to society and the environment. In these industrial sites denominated "Seveso sites," the urgent need for an effective strategy emerged markedly to handle hazardous activities and to ensure safe conditions. Since then, the main challenging research issues have focused on how to prevent such accident events and how to mitigate their consequences leading to the development of many risk assessment methodologies. In recent years, researchers and practitioners have tried to provide useful overviews of the existing risk assessment methodologies proposing several reviews. However, these reviews are not exhaustive because they are either dated or focus only on one specific topic (e.g., liquefied natural gas, domino effect, etc.). This work aims to overcome the limitations of the current reviews by providing an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the risk assessment methodologies for handling hazardous substances within the European industry. In particular, we have focused on the current techniques for hazards and accident scenarios identification, as well as probability and consequence analyses for both onshore and offshore installations. Thus, we have identified the research streams that have characterized the activities of researchers and practitioners over the years, and we have then presented and discussed the different risk assessment methodologies available concerning the research stream that they belong to.

Integrated management of safety and security in Seveso sites - sociotechnical perspectives

The call for integrated management of safety and security (IMSS) derives from intensification of digitalisation development and the increased reliance on information communication technologies (ICT) in high-risk industries, such as the chemical and process industry. This development means tightened interconnectedness between industrial automation and control and information technology systems. As a result, the risk landscape is changed towards a stronger interconnectedness of safety, physical and (cyber)security risks, which may lead to major accidents. The objective of this paper is to examine the motivations for IMSS, the current state of IMSS, the cybersecurity-induced risks, including the actualisation of interconnected risks and some sociotechnical tools for IMSS in Seveso plants. They are plants where certain quantities of dangerous substances are present, which are subject to the requirements of the Seveso III Directive (2012/18/EU). The data considered is open source and related to cyber and physical security-induced accidents; interviews with the representatives of Seveso sites and regulators; and literature. The method is qualitative content analysis. The results show that, despite the ongoing development in IMSS at the Seveso sites, IMSS is still in its infancy. Indeed, cybersecurity is often handled in a separate IT department, and the communication with process-safety experts is often inadequate. Furthermore, safety and security risk identification and assessment are essentially undertaken separately. To achieve a real IMSS, we argue that the co-existence of technical and organisational, including structural, functional and cultural development is a fundamental aspect. The combination of such complementary aspects represents the main novelty of this study.

Near Miss Archive: A Challenge to Share Knowledge among Inspectors and Improve Seveso Inspections

In European Seveso Legislation for the control of the hazard of major accidents (Directive 2015/12/UE), the Safety Management System SMS is an essential obligation for managers and the authorities are required to periodically verify its adequateness through periodical inspections at Seveso sites. One of the pillars of the SMS is the collection and analysis of documents on accidents, near misses, and possible anomalies, in order to identify weaknesses and implement continuous improvement. In Italy, for a few years, the documents, gathered from all Italian Seveso sites by the inspectors, have been archived and used for research purposes. The archive currently contains some 4000 reports, collected in 5 years by some 100 inspectors throughout Italy. This paper discusses in detail the challenges faced to extract the knowledge hidden in the documents and make it usable through the design of a robust model. For this aim, machine learning techniques have been used for preprocessing of the reports for extracting the concepts and their relations, organized into an entity-relation model. The effectiveness of this methodology and its potentiality are pointed out by investigating a few hot topics, exploiting the information contained in the repository.

NATECH hazard identification at national level for Seveso sites affected by floods and earthquakes

NATECH hazard identification at national level for Seveso sites affected by floods and earthquakes

Major accidents triggered by malicious manipulations of the control system in process facilities

Security threats on the industrial automated control systems (IACSs) are becoming a growing concern for all the industrial facilities, and in particular for those where large quantities of hazardous substances are stored or handled (e.g. Seveso sites in Europe). Remote (cyber) or physical malicious manipulations of the automated control system of Seveso sites may have consequences comparable to those of conventional major accidents due to internal causes (e.g. loss of containment of hazardous materials, fires, explosions). While consolidated approaches exist to manage and control the cybersecurity of IT and OT systems of a facility, there is an evident lack of procedures to assess the actual link between malicious manipulations of the safety and control systems and the major accidents that can be triggered. In the present study, a specific methodology (PHAROS) was developed to address the identification of major accident scenarios achievable by malicious manipulation of physical components of the plant through the control and safety instrumented systems. The methodology, which exploits a reverse-HazOp concept, also analyses the role of the existing safety barriers in contrasting the chain of events triggered by the malicious manipulation, and may support the definition of design specifications and/or possible IT protection requirements for such barriers. The methodology was applied to a demonstrative case study to understand the features of the results obtained and their potential towards the improvement of the security of the process facility.

Ageing management and monitoring of critical equipment at Seveso sites: An ontological approach

A safe “ageing” of Seveso establishments is a challenge for both operators and regulators. To this scope, Seveso III Directive required to integrate the equipment integrity issue into the safety management system for the major accident prevention; at the same time, the Italian Authority adopted a short-cut method for a quick ageing evaluation, which awards the application of the best techniques to control integrity and prevent deterioration-related failures. In this paper, the use of the ontology has been proposed to support decision-making about the implementation of technical solutions to control equipment ageing and comply the requirements of the Seveso legislation. To contrast deterioration mechanisms, the rapid development of data intensive smart sensors should be exploited and, in this frame, the automated on-line direct monitoring of equipment conditions, based on innovative low-cost sensors, is a novelty and promising solution. The developed ontology-based system points towards the adoption, when possible, of on-line monitoring. This solution provides much more data than traditional measurements and it is essential for the operators to understand how to merge concurrent information and data and to adequately control equipment deterioration. The ontology-based approach appears a viable solution even for this purpose. To demonstrate its potentiality, a real use-case has been used, where the model has been tested in finding the best technical solutions to improve the ageing management of an atmospheric distillation unit of a refinery in order to comply with safety requirements. A further use-case is given to show how the model can be used to react, after real-time damage signals, to restore safety conditions by means of an adequate decision-making.

A Bayesian network-based approach for the assessment and management of ageing in major hazard establishments

Currently, there is an increasing attention towards ageing of industrial equipment, as the phenomenon has been recognised as a cause of severe accidents, recorded in the last years in many process establishments. Recent studies described ageing through a number of key-factors affecting the phenomenon by accelerating or slowing it down. The Italian Competent Authority for the prevention of chemical accidents (Seveso III Directive) adopted a short-cut method, accounting for the assessment of these factors, to evaluate the adequateness of ageing management during inspections at Seveso sites. In this paper, a Bayesian Network was developed, by using the data gathered during the first application of the short-cut method, with the aim to verify the robustness of the approach for ageing assessment and the validity of the a priori assumptions used in assessing the key-factors. The structure of the Bayesian network was established by using experts’ knowledge, whereas the Counting Learning algorithm was adopted to execute the parameter learning by means of the software Netica. The results showed that this network could effectively explore the complex logical and uncertain relationships amongst factors affecting equipment ageing. Results of the present study were exploited to improve the short-cut method.

A Dynamic Approach to Fault Tree Analysis based on Bayesian Beliefs Networks

According to the Seveso Directives, the risk assessment is crucial for an effective control of major accident hazard. Nevertheless, the complexity of many Seveso sites, due to human, technical and organizational factors makes recognized common practices limited because of their intrinsic static nature. In this paper, a dynamic approach for risk assessment is proposed, which allows evaluating moment by moment the state of the system under analysis by Bayesian belief networks. A petrochemical coastal storage was selected as applicative case-study to verify the capability of the dynamic approach. Network training is performed by entering historical reliability data, near-miss and accidents data series collected on-site by periodical inspection plans on critical elements, as well as from the evidences of SMS reports. Upon proper refinement and further validation with reliable field data, the predictive approach may be used as a management decision-making tool.

A study of accident investigation methodologies applied to the Natech events during the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake

Natural hazard triggered technological (Natech) events are low probability but high impact events. It is a relatively new challenge faced by the people involved in disaster risk management and can be particularly complicated. Their rarity signifies the importance to study and analyze past events. The lessons learnt from those accident investigations should be adopted while preparing for possible future occurrences. Accident investigation methods help to better understand the course of events and the causes leading to them. The Department of Energy in the United States and the Centre for Chemical Process Safety, amongst others, list and describe various analytical approaches. Still, in the field of Natech accident investigation these methods are yet to take the commonplace. There is a problem of many available methods and a lack of appropriate literature assessing their ease of usage and applicability so that relevant methods can be selected to address a particular Natech accident. The present study is part of an initiative started at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission to evaluate various accident investigation methods in order to help SEVESO sites and competent authorities in the selection of analytical approaches and extraction of the lessons learned. In this paper, some selected accident investigation methods are applied to two Natech accidents in Japan on the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake along with an evaluation of the accident investigation methods with regards to the depth of the investigation results, ease of usage, applicability etc. The evaluation results established that not one method can satisfactorily analyze an accident as complex as a Natech event and thus, a general approach to select the investigation methods is also discussed.

Dynamic risk analysis for Seveso sites

The accident that occurred in Seveso in 1976 changed our approach to risk assessment forever. For instance, it led to drafting specific European directives to prevent major accident hazards. Their focus is on industrial sites handling dangerous substances and denominated “Seveso sites”. Their operators have the obligation to provide specific information to the competent authorities, such as safety reports. However, risk analysis studies usually provide a static picture of the site status, while the system constantly evolves or degrades. For this reason, this contribution suggests a dynamic risk analysis approach aiming to continuously calibrate and improve, based on new related evidence and lessons learned. The work suggests focusing on such early deviations to lower the probability of high impact low probability (HILP) events. Three complementary methods may be used to process such information: dynamic hazard identification, dynamic analysis of initiating events, and dynamic analysis of consequences. A representative example of their potential is provided by comparing their capabilities with the causes that led to the Seveso catastrophe. Despite its limitations, Dynamic Risk Analysis represents an opportunity for improved decision-making support and critical risk communication.

A national hazard analysis and mapping for seveso establishments

On 23 February 2009, the European Commission adopted a Communication on a Community approach on the prevention of natural and man-made disasters setting out an overall disaster prevention framework and proposing measures to minimize the impacts of disasters. All EU Member States were asked to develop national approaches and procedures to risk management including risk analyses, covering the potential major natural and manmade disasters, taking into account the future impact of climate change. Based on the European Commission guidelines, Romania is currently developing a national approach to risk assessment by taking into account nine major risk categories: floods, droughts, forest fires, earthquakes, mass displacement, Seveso industrial accidents, transport accidents involving hazardous materials, nuclear accidents, and epidemics/zoonoses. This paper will address the difficulties of hazard analyses and technological hazard mapping on a local, regional and national scale for all Seveso establishments. By using REHRA (Rapid Environment and Health Risk Assessment) as the basis for hazard analysis, all Seveso sites will receive a hazard index. By undergoing analysis for major physical effects, each site will go through a worst case scenario simulation of a major technological accident using modeling software. Using G.I.S. software, all spatial data collected from these establishments will be transferred to a WebGIS database. All spatial data will be expressed in a unitary standard according to the INSPIRE Directive which regulates natural risk zones. The resulting technological hazard map will be overlapped to the other hazard maps, thus creating a national hazard map and a starting point for the further national risk assessment

SAFETY AND SECURITY OF SEVESO SITES: STEPPING TOWARDS RESEARCH SYNERGIES AND AN INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK

there is no abstract, this is an opinion paper

Exploitation of the Results of Land Use Planning QRA Analysis to Focus the Inspection of Seveso Plants in Wallonia (Belgium) on External Safety Aspects

In the context of the transposition into Belgian law of the Directive 96/82/CE (Council of the European Union, 1996), also called Seveso II Directive, regional authorities are, in particular, responsible for the inspection of Seveso establishments with regards to external safety (Belgian Official Journal, 2001). Moreover, in Belgium, regional authorities have the responsibility to maintain appropriate distances between establishments covered by the Directive and various areas. To apply this Seveso Directive request (article 12), the Walloon Region developed a methodology to quantify individual risk generated by each Walloon Seveso sites. The Walloon approach selected for the risk assessment and the determination of the “consultation zones” is a probabilistic one with particular assumptions (Delvosalle et al, 2006). This methodology which can be summarized in six steps is based on the use of the DNV software Safeti. Amongst the tools available in this software, the individual risk ranking report permits to determine the composition of risk at specific locations from the result of the modelling. Due to a reorganization of the Walloon regional inspection department, a reflexion was begun to develop, for regional authorities, a more specific inspection method for external safety which must permit to identify the most critical installations for the safety beyond the fences of the plant. This method is similar to a classical risk based inspection (Vianello et al, 2013) method but adapted to Walloon land use planning methodology. In fact, it is based on the result of the modelling of the global risk generated by the plant and the analysis of the individual risk ranking report at specific locations wisely defined by the user. This result allows identifying the installations most contributing to the external risk. However, this method must be used with caution (Bragatto et al, 2012). Indeed, this method permits to identify the most important contributors to the external residual risk by taking into account all safety barriers because it is based on land use planning modelling. However, this prioritisation is valid only whether that all safety barriers operate correctly, are properly maintained and are accurately modelled. So, this individual risk ranking report based on inspection method is an additional tool available for inspection teams but it does not totally replace a classical inspection method and reinforces the interest to inspect all safety barriers which are, of course, a major key for internal and external safety.

The impact of reach and CLP regulations on the safety management of hazardous materials storage

The new European regulations about management of hazardous substances and mixtures, including REACH and CLP Regulations, have introduced numerous restrictions on the use of certain chemical products. These restrictions have led to a reduction of some chemical commercialisation at the expense of others those not requiring special precautions to be used. However, the use of chemicals, although apparently not dangerous, requires careful management to prevent accidental contact between substances and/or mixtures that are incompatible each other. In this paper it is presented a methodology to assess the compatibility of chemicals in a storage field of flammable and/or toxic chemicals, to be used in case a new chemical has to be introduced in the plant. The method is illustrated through its application to a case study consisting in a storage field (Seveso site), storing about 70 chemical, where a modification has to be introduced in the use of a storage tank of dimethylcarbonate. In this case, the new chemical introduced is not dangerous from the Seveso Directive point of view but it is not compatible with halogenated hydrocarbons already stored in the storage field and dangerous for workers health. Therefore, the company has adopted a procedure to prevent the accidental contact between these chemicals during the operation of loading, stored and transport on the road. It's important to notice that this approach allowed both to verify the compliance with Seveso regulations about modifications management and to identify the prevention measures to avoid accidental contact between chemicals, even if the chemicals apparently are not hazardous. The results obtained have been extended to management of all chemicals of the warehouse.

The Impact of Local Regulations on Land Use Planning for Seveso Sites: SMEs Perspective

According to the Piedmont Seveso laws, it is compulsory for the Municipalities with a Seveso plant within their territory the drafting of a Technical Document called RIR - Rischio di Incidente Rilevante (Major Risk Accident). The document requires first of all a detailed investigation concerning all the potential dangerous enterprises settled in the district: obviously the Seveso plants, but also all the typologies of production that involve high temperature/high pressure, or employment of radiations and carcinogenic substances. Furthermore, the Municipalities have a to identify another category of plants, which is not specified in the national laws: The Subthreshold plants, which hold an amount of hazardous substances equal to 20% of the thresholds fixed by the Decree no. 334/1999 to be identified as a Seveso plant. The process for the identification of non-Seveso plants is based on questionnaires sent to the enterprises: it can be very difficult both for the Municipalities and the companies, because they frequently aren't accustomed to the prescriptions and terms of the Seveso laws. Furthermore, after this step, the Municipalities could require another effort to the plant managers, concerning the adoption of measures for the environmental protection, as prescribed in the Provincial Guidelines. The present paper analyses the Piedmont Seveso laws from an industrial point of view, in order to highlight the difficulties that the application of the Land Use Planning local regulations could find in a complex and multifaceted world of SMEs in a period of economic depression

Reference criteria for the identification of accident scenarios in the framework of land use planning

Land use planning (LUP) around industrial sites at risk of major accidents requires the application of sound approaches in the selection of credible accident scenarios. In fact, the ‘technical’ phase of LUP is based on the identification and assessment of relevant accident scenarios. An improper choice of scenarios may critically affect both the ‘technical’ phase of risk assessment and the following ‘policy’ phase concerning decision making on land-use restrictions and/or licensing. The present study introduces a procedure aimed at the systematic identification of reference accident scenarios to be used in the gathering of technical data on potential major accidents, which is a necessary step for LUP around Seveso sites. Possible accident scenarios are generated by an improved version of the MIMAH methodology (Methodology for the Identification of Major Accident Hazards). The accident scenarios are then assessed for LUP relevance considering severity, frequency and time scale criteria. The influence of prevention and mitigation barriers is also taken into account. Two applications are used to demonstrate the proposed procedure. In both case-studies, the proposed methodology proved successful in producing consistent sets of reference scenarios.

Industrial Risk in the Lombardy Region (Italy): What People Perceive and What Are the Gaps to Improve the Risk Communication and the Participatory Processes

Risk communication is of vital importance in today’s society, as audiences become ever more questioning about the causes and effects of risk. However, the communication of risk is a complex activity involving many different types of communicators and destinataries, from scientists, to the media, to government agencies, industry and consumer groups, each of which having its own agendas to fulfil. Such variation across the communication of the same risk can lead to confusion, misunderstandings, misreporting in the media and subsequent conflicts. The goal of risk communication is to produce an informed public. The personal nature of risk issues and the uncertainty associated with estimating risk can provoke considerable anxiety for the public and make adopted risk management strategies less acceptable. Lombardy is one of the most densely populated and industrialized regions in Europe and nearly 280 Seveso sites interest it. The Seveso Directive requires specific measures on risk communication to the population. Nevertheless, the Lombardy Region Authorities consider that the implementation of such provisions is too weak. Therefore an exploratory research has been concluded, in order to estimate the gaps in risk communication and to improve the participation of the population in the emergency preparedness activities. The paper reports the main results of the research and illustrates the potential strategies to improve the risk communication and the population participation and preparedness (Eupolis Lombardia 2011).

Industrial Risk Communication and Conflict Mitigation Strategies.

Lombardy is one of the most densely populated and industrialized regions in Europe, where nearly 280 Seveso sites are located. The issue of risk communication, as set by the European Seveso Directive is therefore of high relevance in this region. Nevertheless, the Lombardy Region Authorities consider that the implementation of the Directive’s provisions is too weak. Therefore, the Lombardy Region financed an exploratory research in November 2009 and all the research activities ended in February 2011. (Eupolis Lombardia 2011). The research was conducted in order to estimate the existing gaps in risk communication, the subsequent conflicts and to evaluate how to improve the participation of the population in the emergency preparedness activities. The main goal of the project was to improve the communication of risk to the population exposed to industrial risks, hence to mitigate the related social conflict on the basis of an institutional learning process involving governmental bodies industrial organizations and the population. The project was supported by a multidisciplinary research group, which investigated the following aspects: - the regional activities regarding the risk communication at local level; - the nature and status of the main stakeholders groups’ perception of the industrial risks and the existing conflicts, collected through interviews and groups’ discussions; - the analysis of the gaps and ways of improvement related to an effective strategy of communication between industry, population and emergency services. A forum involving all the institutional stakeholders was set to discuss this issue. The paper reports the main results of the research and illustrates the potential strategies to improve the risk communication and the population participation and preparedness for the Lombardy Region. The results showed that the level of risk perception of the population in Lombardy is still too low to define a program of communication without having considered in more detail the mode of involvement of the population. In a context characterized by a distorted perception of risk, the low risk perception could be a sensitive issue that may impend the start of the communication process because it could generate anxiety, alarmism or unnecessary conflicts. Nevertheless, the experiments carried out showed that the population potentially exposed to the industrial risks, if properly involved, shows particular interest in issues related to prevention and self-protection. According to the main results of research project, the involvement of population into a dedicated programme on risk communication should not present a significant concern and the conflict between the industries and the population does not appear to be a particular obstacle to risk communication. On the contrary it was shown that collaboration could be beneficial for all the stakeholders while the most significant limitation to this process, is the low public perception of the problem.

Urbanisation control around industrial Seveso sites: the French context

Industrial activity is both an economic lung for a region and a risk generator for the people living in the vicinity of a site. In France, the Toulouse accident highlighted the need to revise the way in which urbanisation control is carried out around industrial sites. Thus, the new law No 2003-699 of 30 July 2003 about the 'prevention of technological and natural risks and the compensation of the damages' has established Technological Risk Prevention Plans (TRPP). These plans aim at reducing vulnerability around Seveso sites by considering the kinetics, the probability and the intensity of the dreaded events. As technical support to decision-makers in risk prevention from both public and private sectors, INERIS has played an important role in the evolution of the French risk prevention plan. In this paper, we will present the TRPP methodology developed so far for Seveso industrial sites, designing a new way for urbanisation control.