Developments in the Safety Science Domain and in Safety Management From the 1970s Till the 1979 Near Disaster at Three Mile Island

Objective: What has been the influence of general management schools and safety research into causes of accidents and disasters on managing safety from 1970 till 1979? Method: The study was limited to original articles and documents, written in English or Dutch from the period under concern. For the Netherlands, the professional journal De Veiligheid (Safety) has been consulted. Results and conclusions: Dominant management approaches started with 1) the classical management starting from the 19th century, with scientific management from the start of the 20st century as a main component. During the interwar period 2) behavioural management started, based on behaviourism, followed by 3) quantitative management from the Second World War onwards. After the war 4) modern management became important. A company was seen as an open system, interacting with an external environment with external stakeholders. These schools management were not exclusive, but have existed in the period together. Early 20th century, the U.S. 'Safety First' movement was the starting point of this knowledge development on managing safety, with cost reduction and production efficiency as key drivers. Psychological models and metaphors explained accidents from ‘unsafe acts’. And safety was managed with training and selection of reckless workers, all in line with scientific management. Supported by behavioural management, this approach remained dominant for many years, even long after World War II. Influenced by quantitative management, potential and actual disasters after the war led to two approaches; loss prevention (up-scaling process industry) and reliability engineering (inherently dangerous processes in the aerospace and nuclear industries). The distinction between process safety and occupational safety became clear after the war, and the two developed into relatively independent domains. In occupational safety in the 1970s human errors thought to be symptoms of mismanagement. The term ‘safety management’ was introduced in scientific safety literature as well as concepts as loose, and tightly coupled processes, organizational culture, incubation of a disaster and mechanisms blinding organizations for portents of disaster scenarios. Loss prevention remained technically oriented. Till 1979 there was no clear relation with safety management. Reliability engineering, based on systems theory did have that relation with the MORT technique as a management audit. The Netherlands mainly followed Anglo-Saxon developments. Late 1970s, following international safety symposia in The Hague and Delft, independent research started in The Netherland

The Role of Emergency Response in Risk Management of Cascading Events Caused by Natech Accidents

Causal analysis of technological accidents is essential to prevent similar future accidents or mitigate their consequences. Natural events may cause a unique type of technological scenarios involving the release of hazardous substances called the Natech accident (i.e., natural hazards triggering technological disasters). Natech accidents have attracted the attention of academic researchers, industrial practitioners, and policy makers due to their uncertain and complex nature, increasing occurrence, and severe consequences of major accidents scenarios if they happen. The increase in the number of natural events in the last decades in fact has led to a growing number of Natech accidents. Moreover, the magnitude of the accidents can escalate when it is triggered by a natural event. In fact, Natech accidents can be characterized by the possibility of multiple simultaneous failures (explosions, loss of containments, fires, etc.), the occurrence of cascading events (domino effect), and the disruption of utilities, safety systems, and lifelines

Texas LPG fire: Domino effects triggered by natural hazards

© 2018 Institution of Chemical Engineers On February 2007, a massive fire in a propane de-asphalting unit in an oil refinery in Texas, USA happened due to liquid propane release from a cracked pipe in a control station injuring four people, damaging extensive equipment, causing significant business interruption, and resulting in more than $50 million losses. The accident was triggered by a natural hazard: freezing of piping at a control station caused an inlet pipe elbow to crack, which in turn, led to the release of high-pressure liquid propane which was rapidly ignited. In addition, there were two near-miss events due to potential domino effects. In fact, the accident could reasonably have resulted in much more severe consequences due to the exposure of large butane storage spheres and chlorine containers, increasing the possibility of a catastrophic domino effect. This paper develops a Natech (natural hazard triggering technological disasters) risk assessment methodology that relies upon Bayesian network capabilities and takes into account the potential Natech domino effects. The methodology is implemented in the intended refinery and mathematically graphically represents the dynamic cause–effect relations between units involved in the scenario, and handles uncertainties among the interactions. In addition, the methodology can provide a risk value for the entire scenario that can be used further for risk-based decision making

Risk assessment of fire accidents in chemical and hydrocarbon processing industry

Fire disasters are among the most dangerous accidents in the chemical and hydrocarbon processing industry. Fires have been the source of major accidents such as the Piper Alpha disaster (1976), the BP Texas City disaster (2005), the Buncefield oil depot fire (2005), Puerto Rico’s fire accident (2009), and the Jaipur fire accident (2009). The catastrophic impact of fire accidents necessitates a detailed understanding of the mechanisms of their occurrence and evolution in a complex engineering system. Detailed understanding will help develop fire prevention and control strategies. This thesis aims to provide a detailed understanding of fire risk in the hydrocarbon production and processing industry. In order to realize this objective, the work presented in the thesis includes three parts: i) Developing a procedure to study potential fire accident scenarios in an offshore facility with different ignition source locations. This procedure helps to design safety measures. The effectiveness of safety measures is verified using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. This work emphasizes that an FLNG layout must be considered with the utmost care since it is the most effective measure in limiting a potential LNG release and subsequent dispersion effect, and directly influences the fire dynamics and thus limits the potential damage. ii) An integrated probabilistic model for fire accident analysis considering the time-dependent nature of the fire is developed. The developed model captures the dynamics of fire evolution using three distinct techniques Bayesian networks, Petri Nets, and a CFD model. The Bayesian network captures the logical dependence of fire causation factors. The Petri Net captures the time-dependent evolution of a fire scenario. The CFD model captures the dimension and impact of the fire accident scenario. The results in this work show that a time-dependent probability analysis model is necessary for fire accidents. iii) Whether fire alone can cause a domino effect is demystified in the last work. A solid-flame model is used in a CFD framework to calculate the escalation vector for a domino effect; escalation probability is assessed using a probit model. The results demonstrate that a pool fire alone sometimes may not cause a domino effect in the current industry. It is other factors, such as explosion and hydrocarbon leakage, work together with a pool fire to escalate into a domino event, for example, the results shown in the case study of the Jaipur fire accident

A guide to the equipment, methods and procedures for the prevention of risks, emergency response and mitigation of the consequences of accidents: Part I

This report is the first part of a dilogy which aims to be a compendium for regulators without a specific background in risk and safety assessment. It describes the state-of-the-art of the safety-related equipment, methods, procedures and projects available nowadays for the prevention of risks, the emergency response and the mitigation of the consequences of accidents. While the present report addresses the above topics from a generic perspective, the second part, currently in preparation, focuses on the particular challenges of the Nordic Seas. The review is based on the retrieval and analysis of a large number of open source information, along with personal contacts with Authorities and HSE representatives of several major oil and gas operators. This helps the reader go into further details and better appreciate the latest technological advancements in offshore safety as a consequence of the lessons learnt from the Macondo Accident.JRC.C.3-Energy Security, Distribution and Market

AN EXTENSION OF THE FAILURE MODE EFFECTS AND CRITICALITY ANALYSIS WITH FUZZY ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS METHOD TO ASSESS THE EMERGENCY SAFETY BARRIERS

The emergency safety barrier is one of the reactive technical safety barriers in industrial facilities. Degrade of emergency safety barriers can lead to a major accident with serious consequences for people, property and the environment. In this context, the purpose of this article is to present a proposed methodology to identify these deficiencies, thus ensuring the effectiveness of the emergency safety barriers. This paper presents an integrated approach that uses fuzzy set theory, extension of failure modes, effects and criticality analysis and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method to deal with uncertainty in decision-making related to the prioritization of risk factors. These risk factors are the prioritization of corrective actions associated with the most critical disturbance modes to improve the reliability of emergency safety barriers. In addition, a Liquefied Petroleum Gas production facility was selected as a case study to assess the emergency safety barriers. The results show that the proposed methodology provides the possibility to evaluate the fire-fighting systems. In addition, the fuzzy analytical approach method is the most reliable and accurate. Therefore, some corrective actions are suggested to reduce the failure criticality of the emergency safety barriers and help practitioners prioritize the improvement of the emergency safety barriers of the Liquefied Petroleum Gas storage facility. This paper has an important role in the dysfunctional analysis of the emergency safety barriers related to the others effects of the release of LPG, such as the effects of domino scenarios

Lessons learned from past accidents - The integration of human and organizational factors with the technical aspect

It is of prime importance to ensure the safety of chemical process plants due to volatile nature of the industry and drastic consequences of the accidents. A number of parameters can affect the safety of the process plants. One of the main parameters that has the influence on the safety of operations is the Human and Organizational Factors (HOF) as suggested by numbers of existing studies. Therefore, in order to enhance the safety of operations it is required to improve the HOF. These factors can be improved by an integrated approach as proposed in this work, instead looking at these factors in an isolation. A number of existing risk assessment approaches have been analysed in this work and their compliance requirements to the relevant International Standards with respect to the HOF. A new quantitative methodology “Method for Error Deduction and Incident Analysis (MEDIA)” has been developed in this work. During the development of this methodology, practicality; consistency; integration with other risk assessment techniques and efficient use of information were explicitly ensured. The MEDIA can help to integrate the HOF around the technical aspect and can prioritize the follow up actions based on risk. The quantification of this methodology is based on results of the accident analysis, that has been carried out in this work. The accidents of 25 years (1988-2012) in the Seveso establishments and that were reported to the European Commission’s Major Accident Reporting System (eMARS) have been studied. The results from the accident analysis have further used in order to learn lessons and to propose future recommendations. These recommendations are mainly aimed at further integration of the HOF and to improve the overall safety of chemical process plants. More specifically, these recommendations are addressed to the use of organizational checklist during the Hazard Identification (HAZID) study; improvement of existing eMARS reporting structure and the legal obligation towards the EU Member States to report their accidents to the European Commission

Dynamic risk assessment of process facilities using advanced probabilistic approaches

A process accident can escalate into a chain of accidents, given the degree of congestion and complex arrangement of process equipment and pipelines. To prevent a chain of accidents, (called the domino effect), detailed assessments of risk and appropriate safety measures are required. The present study investigates available techniques and develops an integrated method to analyze evolving process accident scenarios, including the domino effect. The work presented here comprises two main contributions: a) a predictive model for process accident analysis using imprecise and incomplete information, and b) a predictive model to assess the risk profile of domino effect occurrence. A brief description of each is presented below. In recent years the Bayesian network (BN) has been used to model accident causation and its evolution. Though widely used, conventional BN suffers from two major uncertainties, data and model uncertainties. The former deals with the used of evidence theory while the latter uses canonical probabilistic models. High interdependencies of chemical infrastructure makes it prone to the domino effect. This demands an advanced approach to monitor and manage the risk posed by the domino effect is much needed. Given the dynamic nature of the domino effect, the monitoring and modelling methods need to be continuous time-dependent. A Generalized Stochastic Petrinet (GSPN) framework was chosen to model the domino effect. It enables modelling of an accident propagation pattern as the domino effect. It also enables probability analysis to estimate risk profile, which is of vital importance to design effective safety measures