INHERENTLY SAFER DESIGN BASED ON RAPID RISK ANALYSIS

The importance of inherently safer design (ISD) as a strategy to minim ize risk of accidents in chemical process industries is being repeated ly stressed in recent years. The increasing number, frequency, and ext ents of damage caused by such accidents across the world have contribu ted to this thinking. However even as the need for ISD is being unders cored, there are very few reports on precise methods to implement this concept. Significant recent reports are by Berge (1993, 1995) who has suggested a scenariobased design procedure in which construction of a ccident scenarios in a structured manner is made the basis of ISD. We have been developing and applying the concept of rapid risk analysis ( Khan & Abbasi (1995, 1996, 1997a,b, 1998a,b)). In this paper we presen t an approach to ISD utilizing this concept. We believe, as detailed i n this paper, that this approach is a significant improvement upon Ber ge's procedure in terms of ease, speed, and effectiveness. (C) 1998 El sevier Science Ltd. Ail rights reserved.