This week NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration posted an AWESOME RESOURCE for those of you responsible for your RMP’s Off-Site Consequence Analyzes (OCA) and EPCRA hazard analyses and who like to use CAMEO software suite when doing these off-site consequence analyses.
For RMP, you can use either RMP*Comp or ALOHA; however, I strongly recommend you use RMP*Comp and then use MARPLOT for establishing your “maps” and populations impacted. But if you wish to use CAMEO software suite including ALOHA, then NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration has done an excellent job providing us with step by step instructions on how to use these tools in your OCA, both the Worst-Case and Alternative-Case scenarios, and EPCRA Hazard Analyses.
There is even something for those of you in the Public Emergency Response sector and looking for help with your EPCRA Hazard Analyses. EPCRA requires community planners to perform hazard analyses for local chemical facilities of note or those that have regulated chemicals onsite in quantities greater than the relevant threshold planning quantities.
The “Green Book“ provides step-by-step guidance for performing EPCRA hazard analyses. Developed in 1987, the “Green Book“ method uses simple calculations to estimate the size of the area around a chemical facility or along a transportation route that could be affected by an accidental chemical release. This area may be called a threat zone, vulnerable zone, or screening zone. Planners can use this to quickly determine the relative hazards of chemicals stored in their community. Once the worst hazards are identified, planners may analyze those locations more thoroughly. Only one tool in the CAMEO software suite can be used for EPCRA hazard analyses:
- the CAMEOfm Screening & Scenarios module
This module automates the Green Book procedures exactly, just as RMP*Comp implements the RMP guidance. The CAMEOfm Screening & Scenarios module is essentially a calculator that estimates the radius of a circular threat zone based on a few conditions you enter to describe an accidental chemical release.
NOTE: You cannot use ALOHA to complete your EPCRA hazard analyses, because you must use the exact equations specified in the “Green Book“. Although the Green Book scenario requirements may look similar to some of ALOHA’s, you’ll find that their threat distance estimates are often quite different because they use different equations. The third page in this series describes some of the key differences between ALOHA and the Green Book methods.