Economic Evaluation of External Safety Measures in the ALARA Regime. Louis Goossens, Delft University of Technology; Bob Otten and Nol Verster, Dutch Economic Institute Rotterdam, Safety Science Group/TUD, P.O.Box 5050, NL-2600 GB DELFT, the Netherlands, telephone +31.15.2781080, fax +31.15.2622235, e-mail louis.goossens@wtm.tudelft.nl
The current risk policy in the Netherlands under the Seveso-directive requires quantitative risk assessments for major hazards installations of which the risks are presented both as individual risk contours as well as group risks (fN-curves). The individual risk has a limit value below which the ALARA-regime (ALARA = As Low As Reasonably Achievable) exists. The groups risk has an orientation value below which ALARA is applied. An important criterion for the choice of additional mitigating measures are the costs and benefits of the expected effects of the measures. A study has been done to identify whether economic evaluation instruments can be applied to further decision making on additional safety measures. The paper describes the findings of the study, which concluded that a restrictive cost-benefit analysis can be a useful instrument. Restrictive in this context means that current risk standards are not at stake. This entails that an evaluation either regards various measures with a similar safety mitigating effect (for instance, comparing a source oriented measure with an effect oriented measure or the other way around), or regards measures which are part of the ALARA-regime (and should bring the risk contours closer to the facility). The more strict the restrictions (i.e. lower limit values) are, the lower the balance of costs and benefits of safety measures will be. It could even become negative. Then a cost-benefit-analysis might better be replaced by a cost-effectiveness-analysis. The findings will be illustrated with a few cases of existing major hazards installations in the Netherlands.
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