A Resilience-based Integrated Process Systems Hazard Analysis (RIPSHA) approach: Part I plant system layer

In recent years, the chemical process industry has witnessed increased process safety management challenges. One of the initial steps in process safety and risk management of any facility is hazard identification and analysis. Two types of factors: 1) technical (e.g., equipment malfunction), and 2) social (e.g., human and organizational factors) are important in analyzing hazards of a socio-technical process system as a whole. With the conventional process hazard analysis (PHA) methods, there is a tendency to overlook the potential impact of socio-technical systems on the health and sustainment of safeguards. This disregard leads to ignoring social factors, such as shift handover communication, downtime, operating and maintenance procedures, and more. This need calls for the development of a holistic and integrated systems framework for hazard analysis. This paper presents a novel hazards analysis approach that incorporates both technical and social factors within a single analysis method called Resilience-based Integrated Process Systems Hazard Analysis (RIPSHA). This approach is based on the following resilience aspects – ‘early detection’, ‘error tolerant design’, ‘plasticity’, and ‘recoverability’. This work establishes and presents a worksheet for analysis of hazards within process systems. The paper concludes with an example of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) process system to illustrate the key concepts of this integrated approach.