Land-use planning in the vicinity of major accident hazard installations in Greece

Land-use planning, as concerns the prevention and limitation of the consequences of possible major accidents from industrial installations, is an essential mechanism for dealing with actual or potential conflicts between sources of risk, such as potentially hazardous industrial developments, and surrounding land-uses. The objective of this paper is to present a decision making methodology that is suitable for assisting urban and spatial planning in the vicinity of hazardous installations and therefore covers the directions of Article 12 of the European Council Directive 96/82/EC (the so-called SEVESO II directive). The proposed methodology was designed to address the particularities of the Greek case, regarding the type and availability of risk and spatial data. It incorporates a broad set of multiple and conflicting criteria that arise in land-use planning decisions, through the application of a well known multi-criteria decision analysis method (ELECTRE TRI). Additionally, it is easy to use (comprised of simple steps) and can be readily incorporated into Geographical Information System based platforms.