Development And Application Of Environmental Risk Management Self-inspection Tools For Industrial Park

Environmental accidents, the majority of which derived from industrial production, has occured frequently in China over the past years. With the strengthening requirements of urban planning and environmental management, industrial enterprises have been gradually relocated to industrial parks, resulting in a growing environmental risks. The assessment and management of these environmental risks of China’s more than 20,000 industrial parks has therefore becomed increasingly pressing.This study begins by reviewing the charateristics of environmental risks occurred in industrial parks. By examining also the causes behind environmental accidents of the past years, this study illustrates that the abundant risk sources, comprising mainly of production risks, transportation risks and management risks leave industrial parks vulnerable to domino effect accidents. A good planning scheme and emergency measures however,can effectively reduce these environmental risks.Thisstudy, aiming to find out how risk sources lead to environmental accidents and come up with management suggestions, focuses on sudden and accumulative environmental accidents. By applying the Methodology for the Identification of the Major Accident Hazard, this study identifies the features of production and transportation risks in industrial parks and create risk contexts. It then employs the Bow-Tie Analysis with a combined tool of accident tree and event tree, analyses those featured accidents and comes up with key factors in industrial park environmental risk management. Relating to the three aspects of environmental risks, an Industrial Park Environmental Risk Management Evaluation Index is proposed, comprising of thirteen factors in three categories, namely: 1) environmental risk source(including industrial sector, hazardous substances, process and equipment reliability, transportation, abandoned substance property and method); 2) risk control mechanism(including mechanisms on environmental security management, early warning and emergency response, monitoring and information management); 3) environmental risk receptor(including atmosphere, water, soil and human population). Avalue is assigned to each factor in the Industrial Park Environmental Risk Management Evaluation Index based on Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP), and the risk levels are established.The thirteen factors are further made, drawing upon relevant laws, regulations, standards and existing research, into parts of a checklist. Factors for self-evaluation of industrial park are then identified, with an Environmental Risk Management Checklist for quick evaluation being formalized.A field survey on two typical industrial parks located in Guizhou Province is subsequently conducted following the above research analyses. The results show thatthe Environmental Risk Management Checklist can effectively illustrate the scales of environmental risks in industrial parks and enables the managing authority to identify the environmental risk, potential harzards and weak points. By achieving a standardized management, the Environmental Risk Management Checklist provide an effective management tool for China’s industrial park environmental risk management.