Local Land-Use Planning and Natural Hazards in Coastal North Carolina

The North Carolina Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) of 1974 was designed to protect coastal resources. This legislation required local governments in the coastal region to develop land-use plans to guide development. While many saw a strong need to control growth in the region, few local governments managed land use. Proponents of the law believed that local land-use planning could protect the environment from unwise growth, while still allowing local control of development. To determine CAMA's impact after more than a decade, we interviewed thirty local governments in North Carolina. This research was part of a larger National Science Foundation-sponsored study of land-use planning in North Carolina and four other states. The results from these interviews and additional surveys indicate that CAMA has played a critical role in shaping land-use planning in the coastal region. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that, while the mandate is still necessary to ensure local land-use planning in most communities, CAMA has increased support for planning and may be playing a long-term educational role. In this article, we provide a brief history of CAMA and its land-use planning requirements, particularly those related to natural hazards. We then examine the findings from our interviews and their implications for the future

Learning lessons from chemical incidents – What’s stopping us and how we can make it happen

While the value of lessons learning is proclaimed far and wide by industry experts, recent accidents in OECD countries put into question the degree to which high hazard industries are using accident information effectively. Lessons learning is a central part of chemical accident risk management because it confronts the reality that individuals, and at a larger scale, organisations, can be blind to the potential for failure in a system. The safety management system (SMS) and the risk management processes, which encompass hazard identification, risk assessment and risk treatment, are the expression of conscious efforts to deal with these vulnerabilities. Insufficient identification of hazards in process design, and underestimation of the risk associated with even the smallest deviations from established standards and procedural norms may have serious and sometimes even fatal impacts. So it is crucial that lessons learned from incidents provide input into the risk analysis process. It is equally important that those involved know how to identify and apply the relevant lessons from the resources available and do so. There is plenty of evidence from recent accidents and studies that lessons available from incidents were not used effectively. While there is an ample supply of chemical accident information within large corporations as well as in the public domain, the accessibility and exploitation of these resources has not necessarily grown. The authors argue that one explanation for failing to learn from past lessons stems from a collective failure of all stakeholders to invest in lessons learning beyond reporting chemical accident investigation findings. The authors further argue that a major reason for this is that the traditional ‘command and control’ form of leadership, prevalent in industry, inhibits organisational learning by taking inadequate account of the operational context and failing to achieve an effective balance between control and adaptation. Recent empirical studies underline the importance of this balance of administrative and adaptive practices for organisational learning to be effective, so that lessons from incidents are embedded into operational reality. The authors propose how such a learning culture can be achieved by employing specific adaptive and enabling leadership practices

Legal Notice

EUR 26331 ENiThe mission of the IPSC is to enhance safety and stability of the European society on the basis of an agreed EU agenda by creating scientific results and turning them into measurable impact. Based on a combination of advanced ICT and engineering expertise, IPSC provides European policy makers with scientific and technology advice on issues that are relevant to safety, security and stability within and outside the EU. Due to the horizontal nature of its work, the IPSC closely collaborates with a large number of European and international stakeholders from different expert communities

Survey on methodologies in the risk assessment of chemical exposures in emergency response situations in Europe

A scientifically sound assessment of the risk to human health resulting from acute chemical releases is the cornerstone for chemical incident prevention, preparedness and response. Although the general methodology to identify acute toxicity of chemicals has not substantially changed in the last decades, there is ongoing debate on the current approaches for human health risk assessment in scenarios involving acute chemical releases. A survey was conducted to identify: (1) the most important present and potential future chemical incident scenarios and anticipated changes in chemical incidents or their management; (2) information, tools and guidance used in different countries to assess health risks from acute chemical releases; and (3) needs for new information, tools, guidance and expertise to enable the valid and rapid health risk assessment of acute chemical exposures. According to the results, there is an obvious variability in risk assessment practices within Europe. The multiplicity of acute exposure reference values appears to result in variable practices. There is a need for training especially on the practical application of acute exposure reference values. Although acutely toxic and irritating/corrosive chemicals will remain serious risks also in future the development of plausible scenarios for potential emerging risks is also needed. This includes risks from new mixtures and chemicals (e.g. nanoparticles).JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen