Rewriting MISHAP: The development of MISHAP12

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) uses the MISHAP01 (Model for the estimation of Individual and Societal risk from HAzards of Pipelines) model to calculate the risks associated with Major Accident Hazard (MAH) pipelines in Great Britain. The risks calculated are used to determine the distances to land-use planning (LUP) zones around the MAH pipeline.

MISHAP was originally developed in the 1990s using Visual Basic 6 (VB6). An updated version, MISHAP01, was released in 2001. A Microsoft Excel® application, called PipelineRiskAT was also developed to allow multiple MISHAP01 runs to be carried out concurrently. HSE asked the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL) to rewrite the model, using Microsoft Excel®, to bring the code up-to-date and to allow easy implementation of improvements to the model. The revised model is called MISHAP12.

HSL have tested the new code using a representative set of pipelines. The tests show that there is only a minimal impact on the final LUP zones generated compared to those generated using the older models.