Integration of environmental and human health risk assessment for industries using hazardous materials: A quantitative multi criteria approach for environmental decision makers

Environmental management, for which environmental and human health risk assessment is the first stage, is a requirement for industries both before construction and during operation in order to sustain improved quality of life in the ecosystem. Therefore, the aim of this study is to propose an approach that integrates environmental and human health risk assessment for industries using hazardous materials in order to support environmental decision makers with quantitative and directive results. Analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy logic are used as tools to handle problems caused by complexity of environment and uncertain data. When the proposed approach is implemented to a scenario, it was concluded that it is possible to define risk sources with their risk classes and related membership degrees in that classes which enable the decision maker to decide which risk source has priority. In addition, they can easily point out and rank the factors contributing those risk sources owing to priority weights of them. As a result, environmental decision makers can use this approach while they are developing management alternatives for unfounded and on-going industrial plants using hazardous materials.

Research Highlights► Environmental risk factors for industries using hazardous materials were determined. ► Uncertainty in environmental events were compensated by using fuzzy numbers. ► Fuzzy inference systems reduced complexity of quantification in ERA. ► Risk can be reduced by focusing on the factor that have highest priority for risk. ► Industries can rank their environmental risk sources based on results of approach.