Attractiveness Assessment of Chemical Facilities Operating in Critical Areas: Development of a Semi-Quantitative Methodology Tailored to the Maghreb Context

Intentional acts of interference towards chemical and process installations became a relevant concern over the last decades. The successful attacks involving the release of hazardous substances contained in industrial facilities may result in severe consequences for population and environment. This issue is exacerbated in critical areas, which experience the settlement of terrorist groups, aimed at destabilizing the political and economic context. In particular, in the Maghreb area, chemical and process installations operate in a high socio-political instability context. In this perspective, standard security assessment methods dedicated to process facilities are not exhaustive and do not allow to cope with the actual value of the threat and risks involved. In the present contribution, an attractiveness assessment method is presented and tailored for industrial facilities located in critical areas, with particular reference to the Maghreb context. Attractiveness is proposed as a proxy to the attack likelihood to support security risk screening analyses. Technical and not technical factors are accounted for in the methodology, in order to more adequately depict the motives and triggers contributing to the attractiveness. The procedure for attractiveness assessment is finally exemplified through the analysis of two case studies. The analysis demonstrates the importance of not limiting plant attractiveness assessment to a consequence-based evaluation, but to instead stress the geo-political, ideological and strategic incentives in the specific Maghreb context.