Author(s): Ch. Giannakidou; D. Diakoulaki; C. D. Memos
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Major industrial accident; Coastal flooding; Site selection; Multi-criteria analysis
Abstract: Natural hazards can trigger major industrial accidents, which can affect industrial installations and severely damage human health and the environment even beyond the site boundary. Such accidents, also called Na Tech (natural–technical) accidents, deserve particular attention since they can cause the release of hazardous substances possibly resulting in severe environmental pollution, release of radio energy, explosions and/or fires. There are various kinds of natural causes of industrial accidents, such as landslides, hurricanes, high winds, tsunamis, lightning, cold/hot temperature, floods, heavy rains etc. The scope of this paper is to closely examine coastal flooding as a parameter in causing an industrial accident, as the for example the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, and the role of this parameter in a decision making process for an industrial site selection. Land use planning is a complex procedure that requires multi-criteria decision analysis involving economic, environmental and social parameters. In this context the importance of a natural hazard for the industrial site selection should be taken into consideration by the decision makers. In this paper, the multi-criteria method AHP is used for assessing the importance of an accident risk triggered by coastal flooding in industrial site selection.
Year: 2015