Building urban gas process safety management (UG-PSM) system: Based on root cause analysis with 160 urban gas accidents in China

Abstract

Urban safety is significantly impacted by the complexity of urban gas accidents. Although China has put forward the goal of “zero fatalities in accidents” for urban gas, unfortunately, the root causes of the unsound safety culture and imperfect safety management system of urban gas enterprises remain unresolved. Therefore, statistical analysis and 24Model analysis of 160 urban gas accidents in mainland China were performed to investigate the proximate causes of the accidents and the current situation of urban gas safety. The CCPS's risk-based process safety elements were used to identify potential deficiencies in the current urban gas process safety management (UG-PSM). During the analysis, it was observed that insufficient implementation of concealed danger investigation and rectification accounted for 76%, which is the primary proximate cause of urban gas accidents. Stakeholder outreach is the most under-represented competency in urban gas safety management. Based on the results, a novel framework for the UG-PSM system was constructed, and the theory of urban gas safety management was further improved. Furthermore, we evaluated the matching degree between UG-PSM elements and the existing measures of the government, urban gas associations, third-party organizations, and urban gas enterprises. Finally, we analyzed the feasibility, challenges, and development directions of the UG-PSM system. This study establishes a foundation for researchers and practitioners in the future research and practice of urban gas process safety and provides theoretical guidance for preventing high-incidence accidents of urban gas in China.