Henry Londiche

Governance of the territory around hazardous industrial plants: decision process and technological risk

European regulation about major accident hazards, since the 9th December 1996 Seveso II directive, not only imposes the prevention of technological risk at their source but also imposes limitations to the land-use planning (12th article). Until the major accident occurred in Toulouse in September 2001, this requirements were mostly concerning new establishments or their modifications. The French new law about industrial risk control voted on the 30th July 2003 [1], proposes to expand this land-use planning to areas where industry and other urban activities have already been present together, sometimes for a long time. This new element, imposes new tools to support public decision. The following paper proposes the basis for such a tool based partly on an analysis of the Toulouse explosion and its consequence. A the tool, which aims at implementing the technological risk prevention plans is based on a decision process involving the evaluation of three different levels of vulnerability on the territory.