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Abstract: Many major accidents due to toxic release in the past have caused many fatalities such as the tragedy of MIC release in Bhopal, India (1984). One of the approaches is to use inherently safer design technique that utilizes inherent safety principle to eliminate or minimize accidents rather than to control the hazard. This technique is best implemented in preliminary design stage where the consequence of toxic release can be evaluated and necessary design improvements can be implemented to eliminate or minimize the accidents to as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) without resorting to costly protective system. However, currently there is no commercial tool available that has such capability. This paper reports on the preliminary findings on the development of a prototype tool for consequence analysis and design improvement via inherent safety principle by utilizing an integrated process design simulator with toxic release consequence analysis model. The consequence analysis based on the worst-case scenarios during process flowsheeting stage were conducted as case studies. The preliminary finding shows that toxic release consequences analysis tool (TORCAT) has capability to eliminate or minimize the potential toxic release accidents by adopting the inherent safety principle early in preliminary design stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article further elaborates the findings by Reniers et al. in 2007 and 2008. A discrete-time approximation is presented to determine the severity of a major accident threat triggering immediate evacuation and its expected resulting costs. By implementing the proposed mathematical model, precautionary evacuation decision problems can be tackled in a realistic way, i.e., allowing for major accident threats with limited duration. Furthermore, the model is moulded into a working procedure which was used to develop software to solve the suggested algorithms. A case-study is provided and the results obtained by application of the methodology are discussed. Using a (realistic) discrete-time approximation computer simulation, we found that ignoring option characteristics may produce suboptimal intervention decisions in shutdown settings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The Aramis method proposes a complete and efficient way to manage risk analysis by using the bow-tie representation. This paper shows how the bow-tie representation can also be appropriate for experience learning. It describes how a pharmaceutical production plant uses bow-ties for incident and accident analysis. Two levels of bow-ties are constructed: standard bow-ties concern generic risks of the plant whereas local bow-ties represent accident scenarios specific to each workplace. When incidents or accidents are analyzed, knowledge that is gained is added to existing local bow-ties. Regularly, local bow-ties that have been updated are compared to standard bow-ties in order to revise them. Knowledge on safety at the global and at local levels is hence as accurate as possible and memorized in a real time framework. As it relies on the communication between safety experts and local operators, this use of the bow-ties contributes therefore to organizational learning for safety. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]