Software Interoperability in Consequence Assessment: Results of a Feasibility Study

The Competent Authorities responsible for the implementation of the Seveso Directive in their countries have, amongst others, the task of reviewing the safety reports of Seveso-type installations. This activity involves the examination of the hazard identification as well as the results of the frequency and consequence assessment of the identified accident scenarios. This verification activity might be very cumbersome and time consuming if the models and software tools used by the Authority are different from those used by the Operator. This is due to the lack of interoperability among the large number of software tools available for risk analysis, all considered acceptable by the scientific community. Considering that a relevant percentage of input data requested by the different tools is common, the software interoperability would strongly and effectively reduce the burden of work of authorities. Furthermore, the software interoperability in risk analysis would be very valuable also to operators and to models and software developers. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of a feasibility study, recently completed by the authors, aimed at identifying the main problems associated with the definition of a common data exchange format for a fundamental phase of the risk analysis procedure: the assessment of accident consequences.