Disaster management in industrial areas: perspectives, challenges and future research

Purpose: In most countries, development, growth, and sustenance of industrial facilities are given utmost importance due to the influence in the socio-economic development of the country. Therefore, special economic zones, or industrial areas or industrial cities are developed in order to provide the required services for the sustained operation of such facilities. Such facilities not only provide a prolonged economic support to the country but it also helps in the societal aspects as well by providing livelihood to thousands of people. Therefore, any disaster in any of the facilities in the industrial area will have a significant impact on the population, facilities, the economy, and threatens the sustainability of the operations. This paper provides review of such literature that focus on theory and practice of disaster management in industrial cities. Design/methodology/approach: In the paper, content analysis method is used in order to elicit the insights of the literature available. The methodology uses search methods, literature segregation and developing the current knowledge on different phases of industrial disaster management. Findings: It is found that the research is done in all phases of disaster management, namely, preventive phase, reactive phase and corrective phase. The research in each of these areas are focused on four main aspects, which are facilities, resources, support systems and modeling. Nevertheless, the research in the industrial cities is insignificant. Moreover, the modeling part does not explicitly consider the nature of industrial cities, where many of the chemical and chemical processing can be highly flammable thus creating a very large disaster impact. Some research is focused at an individual plant and scaled up to the industrial cities. The modeling part is weak in terms of comprehensively analyzing and assisting disaster management in the industrial cities. Originality/value: The comprehensive review using content analysis on disaster management is presented here. The review helps the researchers to understand the gap in the literature in order to extend further research for disaster management in large scale industrial cities.Peer Reviewe

INDEX-BASED EMERGENCY RESPONSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (IERMS): A FRAMEWORK FOR THE PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRIAL CITIES IN QATAR

Emergency response operations are very important activities in the industrial areas. An incident in the industrial area can have considerable economic and social impact, response decisions to mitigate the impact of the incident are critical and have to be made in a very short time. Such decisions should consider the allocation of available resources in and around the industrial area. The resources to be dispatched to an incident location should also consider factors such as metrological conditions and the nature of incident location such as wind speed, wind direction, population, chemicals and materials handled, and the characteristics of surrounding industrial facilities. In this thesis, some of the factors related to the incident in the industrial areas have been studied and they are considered for the development of a location-based hazard index (LHI). A higher index value for an incident location means a higher level of response resources required to mitigate the impact of the incident. Therefore, the index provides information on the level of hazard of a particular industrial installation and its surroundings. The index is a new concept in the planning and management of response system in incident location. In order to effectively analyze the dispatch the resources, a framework called Index-based emergency response management system (IERMS) is also proposed. In the framework, data related to the incident location is used to derive the hazard index. A clustering method is used to obtain the maximum value of the index such that enough resources can be dispatched to the incident location. Two mathematical models are developed for the application of the framework, which results in time and resources required for the location and the allocation of different type of resources to the incident location. The application of the framework is demonstrated through a case study of the industrial area with petrochemical facilities. The results of the analysis show that the use of LHI and the framework helps in developing a better response to varied incident conditions. It is expected that the index, framework, and the mathematical models presented in the thesis can help the decision makers in making informed decisions on efficient allocation of resources in order to mitigate the impact of the incidence