The importance of trajectory modelling in accident consequence assessments

Most atmospheric dispersion models used at present or probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) are linear: they take account of the wind speed but not the direction after the first hour. Therefore, the trajectory model is a more realistic description of the cloud's behaviour. However, the extra complexity means that the computing costs increase. This is an important factor for the MARIA code which is intended to be run on computers of varying power. The numbers of early effects predicted by a linear model and a trajectory model in a probabilistic risk assessment were compared to see which model should be preferred. The trajectory model predicted about 25% fewer expected early deaths and 30% more people evacuated than the linear model. However, the trajectory model took about ten times longer to calculate its results. The choice between the two models may depend on the speed of the computer available