The Awareness and Preparedness for Emergencies at Local Level (APELL) Programme was initiated in the late1980s in response to a number of chemical accidents that resulted in deaths and injuries, environmental damage, and extensive economic consequences in the surrounding communities. Initially, the APELL Programme focused on assisting decision-makers and technical personnel in improving community awareness of industrial hazards and in preparing response plans for chemical accidents. Nowadays, it is also applicable to natural hazards. This paper aims to provide to community, locallevel institutions, industry, experts and other stakeholders a tool, using Fuzzy Relation, the Community Risk Fuzzy Model (CRFM) to estimate the various types of risk they are exposed to, supporting the decision-making process, especially as to whether or not further assessments are needed. This tool will be developed based on an existing one, named Community Risk Profile (CRP), of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). An application of CRFM will be presented using three communities at risk of flooding located in the metropolitan area of the City of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Emergency Response Planning for major accidents - toxic gas leaks, fires and explosions - is a powerful tool for the chemical industry today, mainly at large-scale facilities such as oil refineries. This topic has been discussed intensively since a series of major accidents occurred at several places around the world. Organizations, industries and society have been paying close attention to this issue in order to implement the correct actions for dealing with this type of problem. In Brazil, oil refineries are often located in densely populated areas whose residents are vulnerable to major accidents, particularly because of the high-risk industrial activities conducted at these facilities. The preparation of specific Emergency Response Plans for areas surrounding industrial complexes involves fast response systems, with the use of appropriate tools - such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Risk Analyses - supporting decisions that must be taken in critical situations. Consequently, regional mapping that encompasses sets of elements constituting urban environments is very important within the External Emergency Response Planning context. Additionally, modeling critical accident scenarios that affect not only assets, but also employees and neighboring communities, portrays the actual extent of the area affected by the accidents under analysis. By deploying the GIS as tool and modeling critical accident scenarios, georeferenced data can be generated, stored and handled, in addition to presenting the potential of spatial integrated analyses. The inclusion of geoprocessing technology, which is a vital tool for this type of planning, streamlines the integration of these data with quantitative risk analyses, constituting a powerful instrument that examines the composition of critical accident scenarios and their consequences in urban areas and outlying areas around industrial complexes. The integration of these tools is essential as a decision support system for Emergency Response Planning. The use of support tools for dealing with emergency situations is a crucial step for dealing with major industrial accidents. The integrated use of these tools, specially the GIS and Risk Analyses, offers a fresh view of this issue and the science, making approaches to this type of problem more representative. Above all, it examines and quantifies analyses of urban environments around outlying industrial areas, fostering the development of integrated actions that help mitigate widespread impacts caused by industrial activities. Introduction During the 1970s and 1980s, major accidents occurred at several locations all over the world, with heavy losses in terms of human lives and corporate assets, in addition to direct impacts on local eco-systems that resulted in irreparable damage for society (Knegtering, 2002). From the 1960s onwards, the chemical and petrochemical industries contributed strongly to the increase in potential accidents, due to the expansion of the scale of processing plants that rose rapidly for several decades, for economic reasons. These accidents spurred these industries to seek efficient mechanisms that would upgrade their operations, with fewer faults and less serious damages, identifying problems before major accidents occur, as well as paying closer attention to planning future response actions (Souza Júnior, 2002). Within this context, the accident prevention and emergency response planning areas became controversial aspects, due to major accidents whose spatial distribution varied widely. In Brazil, oil refineries are located in densely populated urban areas, stressing the need to prepare and implement emergency accident response planning at an extended scale, as they may well affect areas outside these complexes.