Introducing a pattern for developing emergency scenarios in industries and studying the conformity of the exercised scenarios in the process industries with the presented pattern

Use of a comprehensive and standard-based scenario is of pivotal importance in conducting emergency exercises. Despite the importance of such scenarios, there is no approved, universal pattern used by Iranian industries for designing them. This study firstly aimed at providing a pattern for developing emergency scenarios. Secondly, a set of scenarios which currently are used by major Iranian industries were selected and the confirmatory of them with the proposed pattern were investigated.
At first the content of ISO 22398 and HSEEP standards were studied thoroughly and, by integrating these two, a new pattern was constructed, next, its validity and reliability were determined. Finally, 61 scenarios used by process industries in Iran were collected and the conformity of them with the new pattern was surveyed.
The extracted pattern contained five main sections and 41 subsections. The conformity of examined scenarios with the proposed pattern showed that only subsections such scenario preparation and scenario implementation were considered in all of the scenarios.
The findings of this study emphasize the necessity of using a universal pattern for developing emergency exercise scenarios. Training of this pattern to individuals who involved in developing emergency scenarios would improve the quality of scenarios used by industries and make them stronger against real emergencies.