HARIA-2 (Handling Algorithms for Risk evaluation in Industrial Activities) research is aiming at the development of an integrated methodology for external emergency planning, analysis and response. The project is funded since 1997 by the Italian Civil Protection, through the National Research Council. The methodology is transferred in HARIA-2 software, which takes into account both physical phenomena and sociological aspects of the emergency, i.e. the emergency response organisation and the population behaviour in the surrounding area. This is the main characteristics of the research, to which several Units participate.
The main issues addressed by the project are the modelling of the three main dynamic systems interacting during a major accident in hazardous chemical industries:
- the plant which is the hazard source and the accident that impacts the environment surrounding the plant (System 1).
- the population and other targets, that can be affected by the accident (System 2).
- the rescue services, which can mitigate the consequences of the accident (System 3).
The project has produced a demonstrator allowing a fast simulation of accident scenarios and can be used for training of rescue services and as a support to emergency decision maker. The simulations allow to verify, through a Decision Tree, the effect of different alternative decisions (e.g. staying indoor or evacuate) or of different hypotheses on resources availability, road network configuration, etc.
The demonstrator has been tested by the analysis of the Mexico City accident (1984), with good results. A release of PLG from the PEMEX storage plant originated a flammable cloud, which ignited. The damaged area is shown in the figure. As a consequence of this event, the BLEVE of one spherical tank of 1600 cubic meters occurred, followed by a fire ball of diameter 400 m. The consequences were 500 deaths and 7000 injured persons.
After the completion of the system with the set-up of the module “Dynamic Scenarios”, next steps foresee HARIA 2 application to two real cases (Milazzo and Rosignano Solvay).

Contact person
Prof. M. Mazzini E-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it