'Worst case' methodology for the initial assessment of societal risk from proposed major accident installations

This paper considers the application of one of the weighted risk indicators used by the Major Hazards Assessment Unit (MHAU) of the Health and Safely Executive (HSE) in formulating advice to local planning authorities on the siting of new major accident hazard installations. In such cases the primar y consideration is to ensure that the proposed installation would not be in compatible with existing developments in the vicinity, as identified by the categorisation of the existing developments and the estimation of individu al risk values at those developments. In addition a simple methodology, des cribed here, based on MHAU's "Risk Integral" and a single "worst case" even analysis, is used to enable the societal risk aspects of the hazardous ins tallation to be considered at an early stage of the proposal, and to determ ine the degree of analysis that will be necessary to enable HSE to give app ropriate advice, Crown Copyright (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V . All rights reserved.