Study On Site Selection Of Hazardous Chemical Wharfs Based On Risk Assessment

Recent years, the rapid development of chemical industry leads to an increasing number of docks, wharfs and ports which are involved in hazardous chemical transportations. But there isn’t any regulation or administrative standard for the site selection of those hazardous chemical wharfs. Arbitrary site selection process may cause serious consequence to the nearby economic and ecological environment once accidental hazardous chemicals contamination happens. So we designed a method based on environment risk assessment (ERA) which can provide recommendations to hazardous chemical wharf site selections, then consequently reduce the environmental impact of accidental hazardous chemical leakage.According to the characters of hazardous chemical wharfs site selection, this should be a quantitative and comprehensive work. By reviewing several related reports, and based on Relative Risk Model (RRM) and risk consequence analyze theory, we divided the research area into several sub-regions and set up the relationships between risk source, affected regions, and receptors in these regions. After that the relationships were quantified by using the vulnerability index (V)and exposure index (E), which were calculated through the vulnerability assessment and exposure assessment. Then the quantitative risk consequence (C) was calculated as E multiplies V.According to the risk source analysis result, we selected the conventional liquid hazardous chemical (except oil and liquefied gases) wharf as study object in this article. The leakage source was sorted as pipeline leak, tank leak and ship leak, and the calculation method for risk source intensity was simply summarized. Taking the chemicals feasibility, water body function feasibility and the economical factors into account, the EFDC-hydro and WASP model were used for accidental leakage pollution simulation. Depending on the preliminary assessment of the accident, the assessment of exposure and vulnerability were classified into three categories:human, ecological and economic activities. Then we established an index system respectively and estimate the exposure index and vulnerability index. Human can be affected by drinking or dermal exposure the contaminated water. Subindex of drink water vulnerability included water supply type, vulnerable people, scale and distance. Subindex of dermal exposure included population and exposure type. Subindex of ecological vulnerability included species importance, plankton diversity and benthic organism diversity, and region importance. Subindex of economic vulnerability included income, activity type and restoration cost.Because there was lots of space information in the site selection data, the GIS system was introduced for data management and calculation. Personal GeoDatabase format database was built in ArcGIS software. Water quality simulation results were linked with GIS by using the segmentation number. Index V and E were calculated through GIS spatial analysis funcation.Based on the theoretical analysis above, this study assumed that the Nanjing Chemical Industrial Park (NJCIP) had a new transportation plan of chlorobenzene, which needed to select a site between Wharf Yangtze and Wharf Xiba. Site selection was conducted based on this case.At last we reviewed the site selection method, drew the main conclusions as well as the inadequacies of the study, and looked forward the further research.