Risk assessment in decision making related to land-use planning (LUP) as required by the Seveso II directive

Olivier Salvi (1) , Didier Gaston (1)

1 INERIS - Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques

The 1999 annual report from the European Environment Agency indicated that in spite of measures on major industrial accidents in force since 1984, the trend in accidents shows that many of the often seemingly trivial 'lessons learned' from accidents have not yet been sufficiently evaluated and implemented in industry's practices and standards. It was confirmed by the recent accidents (Enschede in 2000, Toulouse in 2001) that have shown that disasters continue to occur throughout the EU despite of the efforts to control major accident hazards with Seveso I and Seveso II directives. Moreover, a recent communication from the Commission (European Commission, 2002) indicates that the frequency of major accidents is estimated at about 3.10~3 per year if we consider the number of accidents reported in the accident database of the European Commission MARS (Major Accident Reporting System) versus the number of hazardous installations throughout the European Union. So, controlling major accident hazards by reducing the risk on-site is not sufficient to promote a sustainable development for both industry and urban areas in the next decades. It is necessary to organise the settlement of industrial and urban areas with land-use planning (LUP). This paper presents an approach to implement LUP in the context of the Seveso II directive1 . In the first part, the requirements of the directive regarding LUP are given, and the use of LUP in a risk management policy is analysed. Then, in the second part, the authors describe the current situation in France, where LUP is applied for more than 10 years with an approach based on the evaluation of the consequences of major accident scenarios. In the third part, the authors share their thoughts to improve the LUP procedure by distinguishing a risk assessment phase and a negotiation phase involving the stakeholders.

Keywords: SEVESO II; LAND-USE PLANNING; RSK ASSESSMENT

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]

Olivier Salvi, Didier Gaston. Risk assessment in decision making related to land-use planning (LUP) as required by the Seveso II directive. International ESMG Symposium, Oct 2002, Nuremberg, Germany. ⟨ineris-00972377⟩