A risk-based approach to land-use planning

The Seveso II-Directive requires that the objectives of preventing major accidents and limiting their consequences be taken into account by the Member States in their land-use policies and/or other relevant policies. This is to be achieved by ensuring adequate distances between industrial establishments and residential areas, areas of public use and areas of particular natural sensitivity or interest. A risk-based framework implemented in a computer program is presented which enables one to calculate adequate distances. The criterion used is a limit on the individual risk of death. The method is a simplified risk analysis which represents the plant, whose characteristics are normally unknown at the stage of land-use planning, by generic frequencies of release for process units and storage tanks. Their number depends on the size of the site to be allotted. The procedure is capable of addressing the siting of new establishments and, with due regard to the simplifications used, modifications to and new developments in the vicinity of existing establishments. Given the numerous assumptions, which have to be made, the framework represents a convention.