Author(s)

A. Fidelibus

Abstract

Explosions in the work environment cause a very high level of hazard because of damage. Therefore the EC promulgated the ATEX directive that is intended to reduce this hazard. Explosion hazards, like any other kind of hazard, must be evaluated as a combination of the probability that an accident may happen and the damage expected from that accident. A lot of papers show how to reduce the probability of explosions; so higher and higher safety levels are reached. Anyhow, sometimes it may be necessary to investigate not only probability reduction, but damage reduction too. Sometimes damage reduction may be a cheaper task than probability reduction. So it may be worth evaluating this opportunity. This paper refers to a simplified hazard matrix to point out how important it is to intervene not only on productive processes, but also on the buildings that contain productive processes too. The main advantage that is obtained is to know exactly if certain areas will be safe or not in the accident scenario. Therefore it will be possible to state emergency actions relied to well known reliability data regarding the specific building under examination. Recently an integrated system of physical barriers has been pointed out that often makes it possible to improve buildings resistance without production interruptions. This integrated system regards walls, doors and windows that should be explosion-proof and fire-proof too; moreover it is possible to manage openings by means of specific software that may be programmed having in mind emergency planning. This paper will mainly illustrate this integrated system. Keywords: emergency management planning, barriers, mechanical analysis.

Keywords

emergency management planning, barriers, mechanical analysis.