Incident Response Mechanism for Chemical Facilities
Stephen C. Fortier and Greg Shaw
The George Washington University
Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Washington, D.C., USA
Abstract
Chemical facilities are an integral part of the critical infrastructure of the United States
and remain vulnerable to natural and man-made threats. Harmful contact incidents at
many chemical facilities present the potential for significant loss of life or property for
the enterprise, as well as the surrounding community. The threat to these facilities has
increased significantly since 9/11, because of the propensity of terror organizations to
target this industry.
Regardless of the origin of the threat, chemical facilities should have a consistent and
repeatable emergency response mechanism when responding to incidents. Research
has found that there is no standard or defined response mechanism that has been
published for the chemical industry. This research-in-progress will produce a model
emergency response mechanism for a typical chemical facility. In addition, this research
will identify state-of-the-art information technologies that could be utilized by the
emergency model response mechanism and determine the impact that these
technologies would have on improving system response.
This research will analyze the current practices for emergency response for chemical
facilities and provide a model that could be utilized by small or large chemical facilities.
It will determine what technologies, specifically decision support systems, could be
utilized to improve the chemical facility emergency response mechanism. The results
will provide statistical estimates that will predict the range for an improved solution for
an emergency response mechanism.
The benefit of conducting this research will provide the chemical industry with a model
emergency response mechanism, and a review of the state-of-the-art technologies that
could be used to improve incidence response.
Keywords
Emergency management, early warning systems, information technology, situational
awareness, IDEF0 modeling, business process modeling, simulation, chemical facility.
INTRODUCTION
Chemical facilities have developed safety and security protection mechanisms to control
access, but these mechanisms were not originally designed to protect against
intentional outsider threats. Although there is legislation in the U.S. that requires
certain reporting requirements, the onus to provide protection and emergency response
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lies with the private companies themselves (Lippin, 2006). The size and financial health
of each chemical facility has a major bearing on its ability to provide an effective and
timely response to harmful contact incidents.
This research is reviewing the following questions:
1. What are the essential elements of an effective and efficient chemical facility
emergency response mechanism?
2. What technologies are currently being used, or could be used by chemical
facilities to improve the emergency response mechanism?
3. How do you optimize the technologies used in emergency response to provide
an optimal solution?
4. How do you measure the value and effectiveness of information technologies in
this environment?
5. Does the size of a chemical facility influence its ability to provide an effective
response to a threat?
Chemical sites have an inherent risk of causing property or humanity loss due to an
uncontrolled release of chemicals. The risk of potential unwanted exposure has
increased since 9/11, since terror organizations have targeted chemical facilities. The
U.S. government has undertaken a program to protect its critical infrastructure assets.
The chemical industry is one of the critical infrastructure components. Although the
U.S. government has enacted legislation, the onus for protection and response falls
largely on the individual chemical companies (Belke, 2000). Chemical facilities come in
all shapes and sizes, and it is more difficult for the smaller facilities to protect
themselves, and hence respond to the new threats.
Many of the managers of critical infrastructure assets use the “acceptable risk” method
for protecting their assets and they do not consult with people in the existing
communities. For instance, the chemical industry views risk in three ways: chemical
inventory, worst-case assessment and population at risk. “Since 9/11, in the absence of
federal legislation, ACC members have led the way, investing nearly $3 billion on facility
security enhancements such as intrusion prevention/detection and perimeter
protection, screening employees and improving cyber-security (ACC, 2007).” But the
efforts of the industry members have been focused on prevention.
The chemical industry is pushing the notion of inherent safer design in their facilities.
Yet, the corporate managers have not ensured buy in from its factory workers.
Chemical plant workers are not happy with recent government regulations (Hendershot,
Berger, 2006) of their industry.
A United Steel Worker’s (USW) analysis (Schierow, 2005) of the Government’s
document revealed the following faults:

Employees are not involved in plant safety, and there is little or no protection for
whistle blowers
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
Chemical companies are not required to use less hazardous chemicals or inherently
safer technologies

Potential preemption of more stringent extant laws and propose state laws
“The Homeland Security rules for the nation's high risk chemical plants fall far short of
what is needed to truly make facilities safe from terrorist attacks,” said USW President
Leo W. Gerard (Dorry, 2004). “It's another example of the Bush Administration's
attempt to appear as if it is taking care of industrial safety problems. Security actions
alone are insufficient to protect workers and communities.”
Emergency Response Mechanisms
During the operation phase of many engineering systems, a considerable number of
problems, faults, and incidents can occur leading to direct and indirect consequences
ranging from citizen complaints and increased operational cost to human lives losses
and possibly to disasters. This is especially true when dealing with chemical processing
or producing facilities.
In order to retain an operation mode that is considered “normal” the engineers are
using models and techniques from a wide range of principles like risk and barrier
analysis, cognitive analysis, psychology, ergonomics, computer-human interaction, etc.
They are aiming to design better and safer facilities and proper operating procedures to
minimize the number of harmful contact incidents. However, during the operation
stage of many engineering systems, the timely warning and response of imminent
problems is more desirable in terms of economic, political, environmental, and human
resources than to deal with the outbreak and aftermath in an ad-hoc manner.
Thus chemical facilities managers and personnel have to receive and understand the
information that is transmitted by the components of the system and by the
surrounding environment indicating potential occurrence of unwanted events. Based
on these information flows the personnel must react accordingly in order to prevent the
unwanted events from occurring or mitigate loss if an event occurs. In this framework,
information-based computer systems and communication systems can help managers
and personnel to prevent operational problems and failures by informing them about
the inherent risks and hazards in a timely manner by delivering a clear message to
stakeholders and by providing a list of emergency response procedures.
An early warning system (EWS) in engineering facilities, specifically chemical facilities,
can assist in estimating the occurrence and probability of operational problems during
operations and to provide advice on how to respond to incidents. This research views
EWS as an integral component of an emergency response mechanism.
RESEARCH PROGRAM AND GOALS
The purpose of this research is to characterize the methods, practices, experiences and
problems with chemical facilities responding to terrorism, insider threats, or natural
disasters. Speed to identification of a problem and response to mitigate potential losses
is critical. Special interest is being paid to small production facilities where reports have
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indicated that these facilities lack the resources to implement rudimentary safety and
security precautions. A specific concern is how information technology is used to
provide the situational awareness of the inherent risks in the environment. A review of
the literature finds that there is little published in the area of emergency response
mechanisms for chemical facilities.
This is a two phase research project. The first phase will analyze relevant data, and
conduct site visits to chemical facilities. The second phase will mode and simulate the
utilization of various technology to determine the potential benefit and utility for the
response mechanism.
As a case study, 12 chemical facilities will be selected to analyze the response
mechanism when a facility experiences a harmful contact incident. Of the 12, there is a
mixture of large and small chemical producing/processing facilities. In addition to the
review of the actual chemical facilities, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data is being analyzed to enhance the views
developed by the modeling. The analysis of the data and the site visits are currently
underway.
This research will take a look at a new way to leverage the above mechanisms to
achieve information reuse and drastically improved situational awareness. A systems
integration approach will be employed to risk mitigation and vulnerability reduction.
The IDEF0 (FIPS 183, 1993) modeling will be used to bind the problem space. Once
bounded, application of IDEF0 models allows the decomposition of the activities of the
chemical facility emergency response mechanism. The application of IDEF0 model will
identify the information flow between the activities. These information flows are
integral to understanding critical elements of the response mechanism. The “as is”
models are being developed and they will be “normalized” to a single model to
characterize the typical emergency response mechanism.
In the second phase of this research, the authors will propose a “to be” view of an
efficient response mechanism for a chemical facility. There are extant and evolving
technologies that could be used for the response mechanism when emergencies occur
at chemical facilities and this research will determine what is being used in the industry.
This research proposes using simulation modeling. The model will contain both
elements of DES and continuous simulation. The simulation model will be developed
using the Arena tool. The design approach will utilize the process models developed
earlier and will be converted into simulation models. There will be a clear
understanding of the problem space because the models started as a top-down analysis
and the top level models will be decomposed until they can be effectively processed by
the Arena toolset.
The Arena toolset allows each element of the system, and the connection/relationships
between elements are modeled in a flow chart visual environment, similar to IDEF0
process models. Figure 1 illustrates a basic model of an emergency response
mechanism that has been developed.
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Figure 1. Arena Simulation Model of a Generic Emergency Response Mechanism
The basic building blocks for simulation model creation include Create, Dispose, Process,
Decide, Assign and Record. Each block represents the functionality that will be used in
the model.
This model was derived from the initial research into incident response models, or
standard emergency response mechanisms. The model was also influenced by the
requirements of federal regulations for chemical facilities. Typically, chemical facilities
produce emergency plans that require 24-hour emergency coordination, a plan of action
and a review of off-site consequence analysis.
The plan of action usually consist of on-site response plans, alarms, location of sensors
to monitor or test the air and off-site response plans.
The simulation model follows a typical sequence when there is a chemical release
detected. It answers the following questions:
1. What is the identification of the chemical? Is the release a result of a chemical
interaction?
2. Is the chemical an EHS or CERCLA hazardous substance (CFATS, 2007)?
3. What quantity was released?
4. What was (or is) the time and duration of the release?
5. What was the release mode? Waterborne or airborne?
6. Is there any acute or chronic health risks associated with this release?
7. What medical information is available for exposed individuals?
8. What part of the local community could be impacted by the release?
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9. Should the effected area shelter in place or evacuate?
Decision support tools will be introduced into the simulation model to determine the
most efficient or optimal solution, in terms of speed of response to the above problems
(questions)?
The technologies included in the simulation are, but not limited to:

Alert mechanisms such as chemical sensors, text messaging, Twitter messaging,
SMS messaging, and broadcast alerts

Analysis mechanisms such as atmospheric dispersion models, evacuation models,
and damage assessment models

Decision support systems and associated technology
The expected impact of this research on response mechanisms for chemical facilities
includes the following:
a. Normalized view of an efficient response mechanism
b. Understanding of the impact the size of a chemical facility has on the structure
and processes of the response mechanism
c. Evaluation of current technology on related to the response mechanism
The result of this modeling activity would allow for information sharing and consistency
between the mechanisms of response, plant operation, and external response
organizations. This could potentially improve emergency preparedness planning.
This methodology, taken from business process engineering, will rationalize the
potential threats to a chemical facility and the possible actions one could take to
mitigate potential losses.
CONCLUSION
This research highlights the need to define an effective and cost efficient emergency
response mechanism for chemical facilities. This proposal comprehensively reviewed
the existing literature on the chemical industry, community right-to-know, information
technology for emergency response, early warning systems, and modeling and
simulation. The proposal offers to conduct a two-phase mixed method study on
defining emergency response for small and large chemical facilities.
Both the qualitative analysis of the current response mechanisms and the quantitative
analysis provided by the simulation of the information technology components could
provide the industry with valuable information on future technology investments. This
analysis could also elucidate any potential problems of chemical facilities that do not
conscribe with the “normal” emergency response architecture.
The proposed research is unique and valuable to both the research community and
industry. Rinaldi (2004) called for researchers to develop simulation models in the area
of critical infrastructure protection, and this research will contribute to the general body
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of knowledge. There has been no other identified research conducted on emergency
response mechanism for chemical facilities.
Although this research will define an optimal response mechanism for chemical
facilities, the onus is on that industry to build the infrastructure to be responsive to
harmful incidents. The chemical industry still operates in the mode of self regulation
and considers the EPA mandates to be “suggestions” in many instances.
The results of this research will be shared with the participants in a structured process
and other peer organizations so that the results can be validated. The benefit of
conducting this research will provide the chemical industry with a model emergency
response mechanism, and a review of the state-of-the-art technologies that could be
used to improve incidence response. The ultimate goal is to provide accurate
information about a release in the shortest time possible.
REFERENCES
1. ACC, 2007, American Chemical Council,
http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_acc/sec_mediakits.asp?CID=258&DID=632
2. FIPS 183, (1993) FIPS Publication 183, http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/idef02.doc.
3. Belke, J.C., (2000) “Chemical accident risks in U.S. industry – A preliminary analysis of
accident risk data from U.S. hazardous chemical facilities, U.S. EPA, 25 September
2000
4. Schierow, L, (2005) Chemical Plant Security, CRS Report for Congress, Updated
February 14, 2005
5. Dorry, N., Jayaraman, N., (2004) “Chemical Industry vs. Public Interest: Redefining
the Public Debate on Chemical Security,” Center for Public Integrity,
www.publicintegrity.org
6. CFATS (2007) Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standard,
http://www.dhs.gov/xprevprot/laws/gc_1166796969417.shtm
7. Rinaldi, S.M., “Modeling and Simulating Critical Infrastructures and Their
Interdependencies,” Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on
System Sciences, 2004
8. Lippin, T.M., et al, (2006) “Chemical Plants Remain Vulnerable to Terrorists: A Call to
Action,” Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 114, No. 9, Sept. 2006, pp. 13071311
9. Fischer, H.W., (1999) “Enhancing Disaster Mitigation Planning and Response
Through the Use of Cyberspace: Suggestions and Issues to Consider,” Journal of
Contingencies and Crisis Management, Vol. 7, No. 1, March 1999
10. Hendershot, D.C., Berger, S. (2006), “Inherently Safer Design and Chemcial Plant
Security and Safety.” Prepared for submission to the United States Senate
Environmental and Public Works Committee, 21 June 2006, Washington, D.C.
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