Safety in container terminal facilities: two different complementary Approaches to estimate the Consequences of the leakage of Flammable Substances.

A very important issue for people involved in safety assessment to understand is the difference between what could happen after the failure of a containment system that causes the release – because of the failure itself – of a flammable substance, and what should be considered as an always present risk, also during normal conditions, without any evident failure. The scope of this article is to explain two approaches (one for each case) whose aim is totally different but if developed together it could help to reach a higher level of safety. Each approach will be applied to a different Italian container terminal facility.