Trends in accidents, disasters and risk sources in Europe

Most of the adverse impacts on man and/or the environment result from routi ne human activities such as the process industry, electricity generation an d use, transport and agriculture (hazards, i.e. sources of risk). Apart fro m such essentially technological hazards, possibly resulting in "accidents" , human health and the environment can also be affected by natural hazards, possibly resulting in "disasters", such as earthquakes or floods. This pap er examines current trends in the risk sources and occurrences of four clas ses of such types of undesired events, entailing largely involuntary risk ( e.g. neither car-driving nor smoking): major accidents at fixed installations in the process industry, incidents/accidents at nuclear installations, marine transport and offshore installation accidents, disasters caused by natural hazards and their potential exacerbation by hum an activities. It aims to provide an integrated overview of such events in Europe ( equiva lent to 15 EU Member States, 4 EFTA, 13 PHARE, 7 TACIS and 5 other South an d South Eastern European countries) during the last decade, estimating and interpreting trends in the number of risk sources and accidental events. Fo r each type of event, specific "accident" definitions are given, illustrati ng the differences in the perception of the respective risk. (C) 1998 Elsev ier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.