Institutional experiential learning in incident response

Literature research on air quality is most often focussed on ambient (chronic) air pollution exposure and not acute air pollution events. Nevertheless, a review of the response to the major explosion and fire at Buncefield (UK) in 2005 argued that a service to respond to major air pollution events and provide public health advice was necessary. Thus, since 2009 England, Scotland and Wales have operated an Air Quality in Major Incidents project to respond to chemical incidents (loss of containment or open uncontrolled combustion). This project keys into the UK civilian contingency framework through a virtual ‘Air Quality Cell’ to supply risk -based public health advice to responders.

Few reviews of these significant major air pollution incidents are found in the literature, and none has explored the events combined. Application of exploratory data analysis (EDA) to the qualitative (e.g. nature of the site causing the incident) and quantitative (e.g. mass concentration of pollutant) datasets for these events is providing answers to questions that will drive policy and practice in pro-active and re-active management of these sites. Pro-actively understanding the function of the sites can focus regulatory compliance processes to reduce the risk these sites pose whilst re-actively, agencies can learn about the nature of the plumes and their potential impact on public health, and this will feed knowledge demonstrably useful in a dynamic contemporaneous risk assessment.