Multi-level planning for protective action making under toxic-gas leakage

Protecting the public from an airborne toxic-gas release requires that appropriate protective actions be selected quickly. When the leakage of toxic-gas happening, the emergency responders must take protective action, namely evacuation or shelter-in-place. But the occurring and developing process of the leakage of toxic-gas are much uncertain, so the decision makers should manage the scene and decide which protective actions should adopt in limited time. This article applies the decision tree method to examine the components of the protective actions decision process. And a more useful for detailed analysis of specific emergency scenarios is described. The results show that the methodology could provide logical and timely protective actions to decision makers.