Derivation of a societal risk acceptance criterion for major accident hazard installations in Sri Lanka

Abstract

tThe usage of risk acceptance criteria for preventing major accident hazards (MAH) in chem-ical industrial installations is not widely practiced in Sri Lanka at present. This paperattempts to derive a societal risk acceptance criterion for MAH installations in the Sri Lankancontext. In the absence of a precedent for a “societal risk acceptance criteria” in Sri Lankaa reference criteria or baselines were developed initially based on historical data using anempirical deductive approach. Disasters resulting from natural and technological eventswere considered. The level of risk is presented in the form of a Cumulative Frequency, F(N) vs Fatalities, N curve or FN curve. Two FN curves for natural disasters were comparedwith one FN curve for technological disasters to select a suitable reference or baseline. Theselected baseline was then compared with internationally accepted societal risk acceptancecriteria for the two major characteristics of the criteria line, slope and anchor point. Basedon this comparison a line having a slope of −1 and an anchor point of (10, 10−4) is proposedas an initial estimate for the societal risk acceptance criterion.