Challenges for introducing risk assessment into land use planning decisions in an Indian context

The 1984 Bhopal accident in India resulted in severe consequences with more than a thousand people dying in the immediate vicinity of the Union Carbide facility. After this tragedy, the implementation of landuse and zoning restrictions around hazardous installations got accepted worldwide as an important strategy reducing consequences from potential industrial accidents. Many European countries have already formulated specific landuse planning policies taking industrial risks into account. However, till date India is yet to effectively employ risk assessment techniques for landuse planning decisions around industrial clusters, as well as the relevant acceptability or tolerability criteria are yet to be formulated.In this paper, we have applied the classical quantitative risk assessment method to map cumulative risk levels arising from a number of hazardous installations located in Haldia, a densely populated area where several industrial plants storing and processing dangerous substances are located. The risk maps were prepared using common GIS tools and functions, and their sensitivity to various factors ascertained using uncertainty analysis techniques. Through the analysis of some reference plants, the aim of the paper is to underline the current difficulties an analyst has to face to determine confident risk maps as a basis for planning the uses of land due to deficiencies in the Indian legislation and the lack of guidelines.