ABSTRACT
Nonetheless such a situation is not typical of India alone-many industrialized western European countries have encountered similar challenges in the past and evolved systematic methods for assessing risk from hazardous industries which then led to the adoption of suitable risk reduction strategies (Pasman and Reniers, 2013). In order to assess cumulative risk arising from a cluster of hazardous industrial establishments and to evaluate options for area level risk mitigation measures, few studies were carried out in countries like Netherlands, UK and Italy during the 1970’s. Some examples of these studies include those undertaken in Rijnmond, the Netherlands, Canvey Island in the UK and the Ravenna area in Italy etc. But then, it is only after the accidents in Bhopal
1 INTRODUCTION
Over the last few decades, a number of largescale industrial accidents have occurred worldwide, resulting in damage and loss of life in the surroundings. Among these events, the Bhopal accident in India (1984) is ranked as the world’s worst ever industrial catastrophe. In the neighbourhood of the Union Carbide plant, more than 150 people died within a few minutes because of acute exposure to the highly toxic methyl iso-cyanate gas which had leaked and dispersed into the air; within a few days of the accident more than a thousand people died (Lees, 1996). Amongst many other reasons, lack of restrictions in uses of land in the surrounding of highly hazardous industrial site and presence of densely populated residential areas in close proximity, were reported as the key reasons for resulting into high number of fatalities in Bhopal.
