ANALYSING THE CONSEQUENCES OF INCIDENTS

"It is easy to dodge our responsibilities but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities." (Lord Stamp of Shortlands)

An important aspect of risk management following hazard identification is the task of consequence analysis. Hazards and operational problems often lead to the release of energy and hazardous materials. What is of importance is the knowledge of "how big?" or "what impact?" will flow from hazardous events. This is the area of consequence analysis and there are several key issues that are discussed in this chapter as a prelude to the more detailed discussion in Chapters 6 and 7. What will be evident from these discussions is that current practice relies heavily on the use of mathematical models to predict a range of physical effects as well as potential impacts on vulnerable receptors.

There are many classes of events that could occur in the process industry, ranging from release of material from the process, through to intermediate material behaviour (pool formation, vapour dispersion) and then impacts on people, property and the environment. Due to the systems nature of events, these are amenable to representation in the form of mathematical models that relate outputs (y) or predictions to given inputs (H), parameters (p) and model form (M).