PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Chemical and process plants, energy facilities, oil and gas installations and industrial facilities are the potential target of physical and cyber-attacks. These may trigger cascading ‘domino’ effects such as the release of flammable, explosive, toxic or noxious substances into the environment and accidents in other areas of the plant not initially attacked.
Security-related threats could affect coasts, rivers, lakes and densely populated areas at regional and national scale. The Major Accident Reporting System reported 557 accidents in EU for the period 1990-2020; 23 of these accidents resulted in domino effects causing €1.1 billion of damages and €3.2 million of environmental damage. The European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection promotes the prevention, preparedness and response to terrorist attacks to energy and transport installations. The European Seveso-III Directive (2012/18/EU) asks for an assessment of the domino effects focusing on safety and related issues but does not address security vulnerability. The link between the two policies has not been established and no guidance is available to identify potential domino effects on lifelines and Seveso establishment, and to assess and control security-related scenarios. Some tools and free software are available, but they do not support safety and security quantitative indicators or security scenarios. Lack of awareness and of prevention and mitigation strategies, along with the absence of specific tools for an integrated safety-security evaluation, is hindering competent authorities in the EU from making safety and security assessments and from effectively managing industrial sites.
OBJECTIVES
The LIFE SECURDOMINO project aims to develop and test a tool for the assessment of safety and security hazards and risks related to domino effects in Seveso sites through plant inspection and aerial photogrammetry performed by drones. It will enable users to reconstruct a site in 3D on a suitable graphic user interface. The tool will provide real-time data for each mapped element to evaluate the probabilities and consequences of accidents, while also enabling real-time mapping of safety barriers and their performances to inform hazard-risk assessments and demonstrate possible dominos events. The system will be hosted in an open web repository.
Specifically, the project aims to:
- Test the tool in three industrial demo sites: an oil storage terminal belonging to Costieri D’Alessio in the harbour area in Livorno, Italy; a small plant producing shooting cartridges belonging to Cheddite, in Livorno; and a large-scale chemical facility belonging to Solvay in the Netherlands);
- Improve the safety and security status of the demonstration sites through the use fo the tool;
- Reduce the time required for planning plant inspections and monitoring of the safety-security barriers;
- Raise awareness of regulators, competent authorities, industrial managers and consultants on prevention and mitigation of domino effects;
- Establish the strategy for replicating the system in 53 Seveso sites in Tuscany (Italy) and 185 sites in the Dutch regions of North Brabant and South Holland; and
- Extend the tool to other non-Seveso sites, such as manufacturing, food processing, water treatment plants.
The project will contribute the implementation of the Seveso Directive on technological disaster risk reduction and the Directive on Critical Infrastructure Protection. It also has relevance for legislation on port facilities security and the Industrial Emissions Directive.
RESULTS
Expected results:
- The development of a tool for the comprehensive assessment and mapping of vulnerability and risk indexes for Seveso sites;
- An open web repository of models for the assessment of process equipment fragility from different types of attack modes and the presence of multiple safety-security barriers and their performance data;
- An handbook to support the use of the tool and the communication of vulnerability results;
- Two innovative procedures for the inspection of Seveso sites consistent with EU and national legal frames (one for Italy and one for The Netherlands) and guidance book for the extension to other EU Member States;
- Application of the tool at three demonstration sites;
- Reduction of the vulnerability index by 40% and the risk scores by 20% at each site; and
- Guidelines and effective actions to raise awareness related to the integration of security-safety in the assessment of major accident hazards. The guidelines will provide support for the revision and improvement of the current regulatory framework at Member State level, helping steer the evolution of the Seveso Directive, land use planning and critical infrastructure protection.
