Vulnerability of the environment in the proximity of an industrial site

Abstract : This work is carried out in the framework of the ARAMIS project, which aims at developing a comprehensive procedure for assessing the risk level associated to an industrial site with respect to the surrounding environment. To this end, an index is defined which consists of the contribution of three terms, expressing the scenario consequence severity, the safety management efficiency and the vulnerability of the surrounding environment. The present work focuses on this last aspect by determining the vulnerability of the area in the proximity of an industrial site from the contribution of classes of elements belonging to the categories of human, environmental and material targets. The applied methodology consists in identifying and quantifying the targets by means of a geographical information system (GIS) and in assessing the contribution of each target on the basis of a multicriteria decision approach (Saaty method). The result is an operational tool allowing competent authorities, industrialists and risk experts to assess the vulnerability of the area surrounding an industrial site.