Process Safety for the 21st Century and Beyond (original) (raw)

Process safety has been practiced as a field of research and safety management in the oil and chemical industries since the 1960s. Over this period there have been many tragic incidents, which have resulted in fatalities as well as asset, environmental, and reputational damage. While standards have improved since then and much work has been done, particularly in inherently safer design and management systems, catastrophic incidents are still happening and will continue to do so until we tackle them head on. It appears as if we are not learning lessons from the past, because the causes of failures for current incidents are the same as past incidents, albeit in different environments. We must learn from these incidents. As an industry, our inability to learn from past incidents and demonstrate that process safety is improving has led to this project, Process Safety in the 21st Century and Beyond. The aim of this project is to envision better process safety by outlining efforts that each stakeholder can take. The project has been informed by a number of sources and resources. In 2011, the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center (MKOPSC) published the Process Safety Research Agenda for the 21st Century 1. This defined a number of key areas where ongoing research was necessary to continue building knowledge. In 2013, the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) published a policy paper called Chemical Engineering Matters 2 , which focused on the four challenges of water, energy, food and nutrition, and health and wellbeing, and highlighted process safety as being a necessary enabler to overcome these challenges. In 2017, MKOPSC and the IChemE Safety Centre developed the next level of these visionary documents-Process Safety in the 21st Century and Beyond. It is, however, necessary to overlay other factors, such as industry, regulatory, and societal perspectives in addition to academic research and teaching. Process safety needs to evolve with industry to stay current with the dynamic technological, societal, and economic standards of society. The main question we want to tackle is what are the actions that we can take to improve the operational safety of facilities? Process safety professionals, across industry, academia, and regulators, have an obligation to drive this improvement, because engineering and science are necessary to address the four challenges outlined in Chemical Engineering Matters, and overcoming these challenges is vital for the ongoing survival of the human race and Earth. The explosive growth rate in India and China will likewise increase demand for energy and chemical production. Even if incident rates do not increase, the total number of incidents would increase by a factor of ten or higher, given the projected growth rate in these countries 3. Viewing the MKOPSC and IChemE documents together gives a picture of the research needed to address the challenges in new ways