By Dr. Hannes Kern, Principal Consultant, IRIS, Austria.
Natural hazards are generally not in the main focus of the CBRNE community. Nevertheless, the still growing effects of climate change do also have severe implications on the safety of industrial installations and major hazard sites. Natural hazards triggering technological disasters (Natech) therefore become more and more also a scenario to be considered in the CBRNE environment. Toxic releases due to effects of large flood events or the failure of safety barriers in nuclear power plants triggered by earthquakes are just a few examples that make the term “Natech” a little bit more concrete. One of the most severe events in that context has been experienced by the Fukushima Disaster.
The conference on risk management for Natech events
The FORMATEX23 European full scale exercise project tries to improve preparedness and response to Natech events. The exercise will take place in September 2023 in and around Linz in Austria. As one of the supporting events the FORMATEX23 consortium launched a conference on risk management for Natech events between 14th and 15thof September 2022 at the scenic St. Florian Monastery near Linz. The conference aimed at giving participants from industry, emergency response, governmental bodies, and the scientific community the chance to exchange and deepen their knowledge on natural hazards triggering technological disasters.
In the course of the conference, the FORMATEX23 team had the pleasure of welcoming leading experts from organizations such as the UNDP, Fire Department Rotterdam-Rijnmond, Disaster Competence Network Austria, the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior and many more. One of the major inputs for the conference was made by Dr. Elisabeth Krausmann from the European Commission Joint Research Centre. Dr. Krausmann is one of the world’s leading researchers on Natech events and was also involved in the analysis of the Fukushima disaster. During her talk she gave valuable insights into current research questions and the European Commissions view on the topic.
One of the key messages was that Natech events are still hig impact low probability events, but due to climate change it is to expect that natural hazards should play a more and more important role also in risk analysis for industrial installations and critical infrastructures. This statement was also reinforced by Hans Luijmes from the Fire Department of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond region. Hans was talking about hurricanes as a growing threat for high hazard installations in costal areas. A topic more connected to Austria than hurricanes was presented by Dr. Hannes Kern from IRIS – Industrial Risk and Safety solutions, he was talking about a recent study on the hazard of wildfires as a trigger for Natech events.
Although Natech events are still low probability events, the conference program included also valuable case studies, that described the various dimensions of Natech events that make preparedness and response a very challenging undertaking. Günter Schönecker from Chempark Linz for brought in that course an interesting case study on the effects of Natech events on internal emergency response crews during a severe flood event in the area of Linz.
Day two of the conference was focusing on tools and strategies for risk management. On that behalf Mr. Amos Necci presented the European Commissions tool for rapid Natech risk assessment – RAPID-N. Rapid-N was developed within the Join Research Centre of the EC and is freely available to be used by governmental bodies, industrial operators or civil protection experts for example. The tool will still undergo further developments in the future and tries also to include up to date research results from relevant areas. In that context Susanna Wernhart from the Disaster Competence Network Austria provided a presentation on the European research project BORIS. The project deals with cross border risk analysis, a very relevant topic especially regarding large scale disasters like Natech events.
The conference proved to be a valuable source of information for the planning of FORMATEX23 exercise and was a great opportunity to gain visibility for an often still overlooked topic.
About the Author:
Dr. Hannes Kern is owner and founder of IRIS. He studied chemical engineering at the Graz University of Technology, did his PhD at the Montanuniversität Leoben (Austria) in the field of safety technology and was scientifically active in research and lecturing for over 10 years. In addition to establishing a research group for process and plant safety and introducing the postgraduate university course in process and plant safety, emergency and disaster management, Dr. Kern was head of a research laboratory and numerous national and international research projects.
Dr. Kern has been a volunteer firefighter for over 25 years and is an expert and author for the areas of CBRN hazards and industrial firefighting. Together with his team, he is available to answer your questions under the brand IRIS – Industrial Risk and Safety Solutions.
