Reducing unknown risk

Reducing unknown risk: The safety engineers’ new horizon

Lindhout, P. (TU Delft Safety and Security Science)
Kingston-Howlett, John (Noordwijk Risk Initiative Foundation)
Hansen, Finn Thorbjorn (Aalborg University)
Reniers, G.L.L.M.E. (TU Delft Safety and Security Science; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; Universiteit Antwerpen)

2020

A significant gap exists between accident scenarios as foreseen by company safety management systems and actual scenarios observed in major accidents. The mere fact that this gap exists is pointing at flawed risk assessments, is leaving hazards unmitigated, threatening worker safety, putting the environment at risk and endangering company continuity. This scoping review gathers perspectives reported in scientific literature about how to address these problems. Safety managers and regulators, attempting to reduce and eventually close this gap, not only encounter the pitfalls of poor safety studies, but also the acceptance of ‘unknown risk’ as a phenomenon, companies being numbed by inadequate process safety indicators, unsettled debates between paradigms on improving process safety, and inflexible recording systems in a dynamic industrial environment. The immediacy of the stagnating long term downward major accident rate trend in the Netherlands underlines the need to address these pitfalls. A method to identify and systematically reduce unknown risks is proposed. The main conclusion is that safety management can never be ready with hazard identification and risk assessment.

Accident rate
High reliability organisations
Safety management
Scenario
Seveso III
Unknown risk

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:3683c110-ff50-427f-91b8-9ea29edddd7e

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlp.2020.104330

0950-4230

Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries: the international journal of chemical and process plant safety, 68

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2020 P. Lindhout, John Kingston-Howlett, Finn Thorbjorn Hansen, G.L.L.M.E. Reniers