System Reliability and Industrial Safety Laboratory
Institute of
Nuclear & Radiological Sciences & Technology, Energy & Safety
National Centre for Scientific
Research «Demokritos»
Land Use Planning
Industrial location decisions are normally private sector decisions based on economic criteria such as proximity to input sources and product markets, transportation cost, labour supply and cost, tax easements, available infrastructure. The effects on the health and safety of the population and the environment of the surrounding areas are external to the operation of industrial plants and, thus, they have entered rarely into the location decision of plant owners. The incidence of catastrophic accidents, however, has prompted several public and private sector responses aiming at preventing the occurrence of such accidents as well as minimizing or mitigating their adverse consequences.
One of the most important ways to mitigate adverse effects of major accidents to public health and safety is the control of land development in the vicinity of major hazard installations. This can be achieved by a multi-criteria decision making methodology to integrate the results of risk analysis of industrial hazardous facilities within a procedure for determining the optimum types of land development in their vicinity.