EXTERNAL PUBLICATIONS

SUMMARY

To safeguard the public, predictive mathematical models are used to estimate the potential consequences of major accident hazards in order to inform risk-based decision making. For instance, these models cover release, dispersion, fire and explosion of hazardous substances. It is important that the performance and limits of applicability of these models is well understood. Model evaluation is a process that can be used to provide assurance of the robustness of predictions and to guide improvements in the modelling techniques. Consequence model evaluation has been a significant area of activity for many years and there have been several European initiatives on harmonisation and evaluation.

This report describes work done within the ‘SAPHEDRA’ collaborative EU platform for evaluation of consequence models. The overall aim of the platform is to derive a commonly agreed model evaluation protocol for consequence models and a series of example applications based on well-established experiments. The work described here is a review of existing model evaluation protocols with recommendations for the structure and content of a new evaluation method that can be broadly applied to models used in risk assessment studies for hazardous materials.

This Research Report and the work it describes were funded by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Its contents, including any opinions and/or conclusions expressed, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect HSE policy.