Industrial hazards and social factors: a question of vulnerability

In order to analyze and try to mitigate the potential consequences of a hazard threatening a complex socio-technical system, the risk analysis framework is classically used. Many risk analysis models recognize now widely the importance of integrating social aspects into the analysis. Another way to deal with potential consequences of hazards is to analyze the vulnerability of the system considered. This paradigm overcomes the shortcomings of risk analysis in situations when the knowledge about the probabilities and the outcomes is incomplete or insufficient. Studies in the literature considering natural hazards show that socio-economic factors are integrated more often and in a natural way in vulnerability analysis models. Nevertheless, it seems that such considerations are missing into models aiming at evaluating the vulnerability to an industrial hazard, especially at a very local level where the technical aspects seem to be predominant. What can we learn from the analysis of the models addressing vulnerability to natural hazards in terms of the integration of social factors? To answer this question, we realized a systematic literature review from scientific journal papers on vulnerability analysis published in the last two decades. We synthesize this review and we propose an integrated vulnerability analysis model; in order to test this model we use as a case-study the incident reports collected in a nuclear facility in Belgium. This confrontation allows us to highlight important factors to be taken into account for a vulnerability analysis conducted in such a context.