Objective Emergency Response Optimization Around Chemical Plants

Multi-Objective Emergency Response Optimization Around Chemical Plants 

Keywords Emergency Planning, Decision Making, Major Accident, Evacuation, Multi-objective Optimization, Evolutionary Algorithm. 

In this work, we propose a methodology for multi-ohjective emergency response decision-making around chemical plants. In the past decades, a large number of severe accidents have been reported in the chemical industry and in the energy sector. Nuclear power plants as well as the handling or transportation of certain quantities of hazardous materials (toxic, flammable and/or explosive) can potentially create major accidents endangering the public and workers health as well as the environment. 

The methodology proposed in this chapter, is based on the determination of the Pareto Optimal set of solutions for multi-objective emergency response decision-making around chemical plants. Given the size of the decision space, the efficient set of solutions cannot be 

---

Fig. 11.2 Basic components of the algorithm for multi-objective emergency response optimization around chemical plants.

Different ERPs (i.e., different areas of evacuation and, hence, different number of evacuees), result in different population distributions as a function of time, and thus in different doses and corresponding health consequences. In this section, some case studies are presented in order to demonstrate our methodology for multi-objective emergency response optimization around chemical plants. Two objectives are considered, i.e. minimize both the expected number of fatalities and the number of evacuees. The cases presented correspond to different types of accidents and different circumstances related to the emergency response issues... 

---