A multi-perspective process safety risk assessment with hybrid risks.

Area of Science:

• Process Safety Engineering
• Risk Management
• Systems Engineering

Background:

• Traditional process safety risk assessments often adopt a single perspective, leading to incomplete or misleading results.
• Stakeholder perceptions, risk magnitudes, and ramifications differ significantly among involved parties (e.g., employees, regulators, community).
• Existing methods struggle to integrate diverse risk types (human safety vs. facility/environmental) and multiple stakeholder viewpoints effectively.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel multi-perspective and hybrid risk assessment methodology for process safety.
• To address the limitations of single-perspective assessments by incorporating stakeholder interactions.
• To develop a framework that distinguishes and integrates safety risks impacting human well-being with facility, property, capital asset, and environmental risks.

Main Methods:

• Development of a comprehensive initial model that allows for the extraction of practical, perspective-based models through reduction.
• Introduction of a hybrid safety-facility risk assessment framework.
• Validation of the methodology using a case study of a city gas pressure reduction station from 12 distinct perspectives.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated that process safety risks vary significantly across different stakeholder perspectives.
• Highlighted the inadequacy of single-perspective risk assessments.
• Validated the necessity and effectiveness of the proposed multi-perspective and hybrid risk assessment approach through a practical case study.

Conclusions:

• A multi-perspective and hybrid risk assessment is essential for a comprehensive and accurate understanding of process safety.
• The developed methodology offers a more realistic and inclusive approach to risk analysis.
• The framework is broadly applicable beyond the specific case study, enhancing organizational risk management and decision-making.