Multi-plant emergency response for tackling major accidents in chemical industrial areas

Emergency response planning for major accidents in the chemical industry is essential to protect the public and workers' health and safety, to reduce the environmental impacts, and to accelerate the resumption of normal operations. So far, much attention has been given to developing and implementing emergency planning in single chemical plants. However in chemical industrial areas - also known as chemical clusters - which consist of a number of different plants, less attention has been given to multi-plant emergency response planning. This paper is aimed at developing a multi-plant emergency response decision tool for chemical clusters in case of major accidents so that not only plant emergency levels but also respective response strategies can be determined. This way, a crisis situation within the chemical cluster can be handled in a much faster way than is the case today.