***Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

An Operational Centre for Managing Major Chemical Industrial Accidents

Abstract

The most important characteristic of major chemical industrial accidents is that they have off-site effects from their original location. As a result, the extent and severity of the accident may significantly affect the population of the adjacent areas. In this case, appropriate actions to protect the affected population should be based on rational and quantitative information that would lead to appropriate and efficient decisions. A computer-integrated tool for managing large-scale industrial accidents is an important facility that provides quantitative estimation of the accident consequences and proposes, under the circumstances, a reliable course of actions to be undertaken automatically. On this basis, an operational center for managing large-scale industrial accidents is developed. Its architecture involves an integrated framework of GIS and RDBMS technology systems equipped with interactive communication capabilities between peripheral software tools. The operational center was developed in distributed software fashion technology for Windows 98 platforms, focusing to the region of Thriasion Pedion of Attika, where the concentration of industrial activity and storage of toxic chemicals is immense within areas of high population density. An appropriate case study is given in order to illuminate the use and necessity of the operational center.

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