Case Studies - Geographical Information Systems and Societal Risk Issues

A Geographical Information System (GIS) is a set of software tools which can be used to input, store, analyse, manipulate and display data with a spatial component. A GIS combines digital cartographic and Computer Aided Design capabilities and integrates these with database software to provide a powerful and versatile tool for use with a wide variety of data. For example, a user's own data can be combined with geographical, land use or hydrological maps; transport networks; and locational, address and census data. A GIS is able to interrogate these data sets and provide sophisticated analysis and thematic maps, which can provide a unique perspective on a problem.

HSL is a member of the Ordnance Survey (OS) Pan Government Agreement for the supply of digital mapping products. This allows access to the wide range of OS business products, including 1:250 000, 1:50 000 and 1:10 000 scale mapping and the OS specialist products used for locating addresses and infrastructure nationwide. HSL also has a national holding of the OS's large scale vector mapping product, MasterMap. Access to these and other products has enabled HSL to provide state of the art GIS support to HSE for a wide variety of projects, including support for major hazard land-use planning decisions and risk assessments.

A recent piece of work for HSE examined societal risk issues. This focused on chemical plants with large inventories of hazardous materials and the risk of fatalities associated with a range of possible release scenarios. Detailed maps were produced of the contours of individual risk around the chemical sites. A number of different data sets were combined to explore how these related to changes in the surrounding population distribution over the past 20 years. Historical mapping data were used to examine the changes in land use around the sites; these highlighted changes in housing, work places and public land. Data sets of census and population location details were then overlaid within the GIS to examine the growth and redistribution of the population.

The resulting maps were used to explain a number of complex societal risk issues in a clear and accessible way, and thus facilitate policy discussions by the Health and Safety Commission and other government departments.

  For further information on Geographical Information Systems please click here.

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