A gaseous dispersion over a complex urban area after an accident with a leakage of chlorine in a chemical factory is investigated experimentally in a wind tunnel experiment under neutral conditions by using a Laser Doppler Anemometer and Analyser IREX. Diffusion fields in a turbulent boundary layer are simulated using a model of a landscape surrounding the factory at a scale of 1:1000. The obtained results indicate that morphology is one of the important parameters in studying atmospheric diffusion. The strong turbulent mixing inside the urban surface layer has created a rapid decrease in the surface concentrations. Moreover, the diffusion measured in these experiments may be used to develop and evaluate operational models to predict the dispersion of chlorine in a chemical factory. (C) 2010 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.