Citation

Yoo B, Choi SD. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019; 16(11): e1611948.

Affiliation

Department of Occupational & Environmental Safety & Health, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI 53190, USA. chois@uww.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph16111948

PMID

31159380

Abstract

Despite improvements in chemical safety management systems, incidents involving the release of hazardous chemicals continue to happen. In some cases, they result in the evacuation of residents. For hazardous chemical release accidents, an evacuation plan needs to be selective enough to consider both the indoor and outdoor concentrations of nearby buildings and the time in which the maximum allowable concentration may occur. In this study, a real-time risk analysis tool was developed based on the geographic information system (GIS) in order to establish the emergency response and risk communication plan for effectively assisting decision-making personnel. A selective evacuation plan was also established by a proposed assessment module considering the indoor/outdoor pollution concentration of buildings and the release duration time of chlorine gas leakage. The GIS-based simulated modules were performed based on eleven buildings of Ulsan city, located near an industrial cluster and home to a high population density. As a result of the simulated real-time risk assessment, only four buildings were affected by chlorine gas concentration according to wind direction and diffusion time. In addition, it was considered effective to establish an indoor/outdoor evacuation plan as opposed to an outdoor evacuation plan which is outside the range of the damage. Subsequently, an emergency evacuation plan was established with the concentration of a hazardous chemical according to the decision-making matrix. This study can enlighten the real-time emergency risk assessment based on GIS while effectively supporting the emergency action plans in response to the release of hazardous chemicals in clustered plants and the community.

Language: en

Keywords

chemical accident; consequence analysis; decision making; emergency response; evacuation plan; geographic information system; real-time risk assessment