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The Seveso directive was introduced in 1976 to improve the safety in the industry with dangerous substances. Reports on incident investigation have been listed in a general database to learn from previous incidents. The origins of incident investigations was discussed in the first section. The specific role of safety barriers was explained using Bellamy’s bow-tie model. As an example, the explosion at a chemical plant in Tarragona was thoroughly investigated using the barrier-based systematic cause analysis technique. Since this is not the only fatal incident in the Seveso industry, an analysis of the implementation of the Seveso III directive was performed. From the implementation, all reports in the eMARS database since 2000 were exam- ined in detail in the second part. The content and the parameters of the database were explained. The database was separated into its three event types: ’Major Acci- dent’, ’Near miss’ and ’Other Event’. Each event type could then be further separated based on the Seveso status of the establishments where an accident occurred. Most attention is paid to the analysis of major accident reports as those account for 80% of all reports. Most major accidents occurred in the ’General chemicals manufacture’ industry, followed by the ’Petrochemical / oil refineries’ industry and the ’Processing of metal’ industry. The first two industries account for 50% of the fatalities in upper tier establishments. They also have the most ’Near Miss’ and ’Other Event’ reports and account for the majority of injuries and fatalities together with the ’Chemical installations’ industry. A few incidents with off-site effects were observed during the analysis and most are briefly mentioned. The on-site lethality of major accidents in the different industries was calculated as the number of injuries divided by the number fatalities, meaning that a higher percentage is related to a lower lethality. Surprisingly, the lethality for incidents in lower tier establishments was higher than for upper tier establishments.

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Public transport is one of the most important ways in which people move around. In Belgium, Hasselt was a pioneer to introduce free public transport. Several other European cities such as Tallinn, Dunkirk and Aubagne have also made public transport free over the past 15 years. In the analysis of the different cases where fare-free public transport (FFPT) was implemented, important criteria were found that favor the implementation of FFPT. These criteria relate to the population density, coverage of the public transport network, quality of the public transport, financial costs and car ownership of the inhabitants of the region. Furthermore, the full impact on travel patterns in three different Belgium cities is studied, namely Antwerp, Ghent and Leuven. Eventually, it is difficult to say whether FFPT is the future in these cities, as the public network is often not governed by municipal, but by regional or federal regulations. Each Belgian city has promising criteria, such as the population density for all three or the extensive public transport network in Antwerp and Ghent, but the question remains if it is fi- nancially feasible.