Chemical industrial areas may constitute potential targets for deliberate actions by terrorists. Terrorists having sufficient knowledge of chemical process operations or plant layout may take advantage of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to cause major events such as fire, explosion and toxic gas dispersion with cross-border consequences in chemical clusters. Thus, an efficient cluster-wise emergency plan to enhance the promptness and efficacy of responding to such attacks is crucial. In this study, the effects of blast wave caused by IEDs are assessed and its potentiality in triggering domino scenarios are analysed. A decision tree is developed to determine the emergency level of each company within the cluster based on the attack outcomes. Furthermore, an alert notification system is set based on a decision matrix. Finally, the identified emergency levels and the alert levels are presented in form of a multi-plant decision matrix. The application of the developed methodology is demonstrated in a case study.

Emergency response planning for major accidents in the chemical industry is essential to protect the public and workers’ health and safety, to reduce the environmental impacts, and to accelerate the resumption of normal operations. So far, much attention has been given to developing and implementing emergency planning in single chemical plants. However in chemical industrial areas – also known as chemical clusters – which consist of a number of different plants, less attention has been given to multi-plant emergency response planning. This paper is aimed at developing a multi-plant emergency response decision tool for chemical clusters in case of major accidents so that not only plant emergency levels but also respective response strategies can be determined. This way, a crisis situation within the chemical cluster can be handled in a much faster way than is the case today.

In chemical industrial areas, the so-called chemical clusters, there are many dangerous chemical process units and storage equipment. Major fire accidents in the chemical clusters may cause huge losses due to domino effects happening outside the boundaries of one chemical plant. Therefore, managing these multi-plant crisis situations are essential to contain and control the fire, to safeguard employees and anyone nearby who might be affected and to minimize damage to property or the environment. However, multi-plant emergency response planning is not identical to that of a single company. In 2013, Reniers & Faes (Reniers & Faes, 2013) proposed an emergency planning approach at chemical cluster level. Accordingly, this paper aims to present a multi-plant emergency planning tool in case of major fire accidents so that the emergency levels and respective response actions at individual companies within the cluster can be identified.