Risk Assessment Plan: identifying what can go wrong at a coastal site, and how far the consequence reaches.

The hazards the project itself presents (flammable and toxic storage, process conditions, handling and transfer, utilities) and the credible ways they can fail. It estimates the consequence of each failure, expresses it as distances to specified damage or exposure thresholds, and maps that against the layout and the people and assets around it.

Risk assessment analyses hazards originating in the project and quantifies their consequence. Disaster management deals with preparedness and response, including for natural hazards originating outside the project such as cyclone and flooding. They meet at the emergency response plan, and a coastal industrial project generally needs both documents.

Where the nature and quantity of hazardous substances warrant it, particularly where notified thresholds under the hazardous chemical rules are crossed, where an appraisal committee has specified it in the Terms of Reference, or where the project sits close to populated areas. For lower-hazard projects a qualitative hazard identification with consequence screening may be proportionate.

It should change the design. Separation and layout distances, bunding and containment volumes, detection and isolation arrangements, fire water storage and pump reliability, relief and venting, and the siting of occupied buildings all follow from the consequence distances. An assessment that leaves the design untouched has usually been done too late.

Because natural hazard and process hazard interact. Storm surge or flooding can breach bunds, float or displace tanks, disable power and fire water pumping, and cut access for external response, all at the same moment. Scenarios that combine the two are the ones that dominate risk on an exposed coast, and they are missed when the two studies are done in isolation.

It is the operational response document that follows from the risk assessment: alarm and communication, incident command roles, muster and evacuation, firefighting and containment actions, medical response, and escalation to external services and mutual aid. For occupiers of major accident hazard installations it is a statutory requirement under the hazardous chemical rules, tested through periodic mock drills.

Depending on the project it may be examined by the appraisal committee for Environment Clearance, by the coastal zone management authority for a CRZ project, by the State Pollution Control Board in connection with consent, and by the factory inspectorate under the Factories Act 1948 and the hazardous chemical rules. The same technical basis has to satisfy all of them, which is an argument for doing it once and properly.