The Importance of Properly Determining Consequences of Process Safety Incidents

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to communicate the importance of properly and consistently determining the consequence of potential process safety incidents. There are different methods to determine consequences such as dispersion modeling and industry data/experience and various process data needs to be factored such as pressures, temperatures, and proximity to workers and the community. Understanding the right consequence is critical in determining the risk of a scenario. Since the combination of consequence and likelihood are the factors for determining risk, consequence must be understood in order to understand and appropriately mitigate risk. The greater the consequence, it is likely that a more robust safeguarding scheme will need to be deployed in order to reduce the likelihood (and thus the risk) of the outcome from occurring. Further, key process owners must be aware of the pertinent safeguard schemes so they can manage and be assured that they are protected against the consequence of interest. The presentation will focus on the importance of determining the right consequence, methods of doing so, and the implementation of the pertinent safeguard schemes commensurate with the consequence determination.