Business and Environmental Risks

This book expounds and validates an innovative methodology to assess the risk to which a given territory is susceptible by adopting a multidisciplinary approach. Environmental, socio-economic and geographical concepts are combined to construct a set of spatial and technical indicators that assess the Social Vulnerability and Industrial Hazardousness of a given territory. Aggregating the indicators in a geographic information system has allowed us to assess the potential risk to which a certain area and its population is subject due to the environmental deterioration caused by the industrial activities located there. Two scales of analysis have been used to make the assessment: a regional one that identifies average risk over large administrative areas such as provinces, and a more detailed scale that we name census unit , to determine the local distribution of risk and contaminant industries. The methodology applied allows us to identify geographical variations in the levels of risk evaluated within the same country and also to compare different countries in Iberoamerica.