THE ARIPAR PROJECT - ANALYSIS OF THE MAJOR ACCIDENT RISKS CONNECTED WITH INDUSTRIAL AND TRANSPORTATION ACTIVITIES IN THE RAVENNA AREA

The paper describes the ARIPAR project aimed at the assessment of the major accident risks connected with storage, process and transportatio n of dangerous substances in the densely populated Ravenna area in Ita ly, which includes a large complex of chemical and petrochemical plant s and minor industries, essentially distributed around an important co mmercial port. Large quantities of dangerous goods are involved in var ious transportation forms connected with the industrial and commercial activity of the port. The project started by making a complete invent ory of fixed installations and transportation activities capable of pr ovoking major fire, explosion and toxic release events; then relevant accident scenarios were developed for the single hazard sources; proba bilities were assigned to the events and consequences were evaluated; finally iso-risk contours and F-N diagrams were evaluated both for the single sources and for the overall area. This required the developmen t of a particular methodology for analysis of area risk and of associa ted software packages which allowed examination of the relative import ance of the different activities and typologies of materials involved. The methodological approach and the results have proved to be very us eful for the priority-ranking of risk mitigating interventions and phy sical planning in a complex area.