Inherent safety concept based proactive risk reduction strategies: A review

Abstract

The growing scale and complexity of process industries have brought safety, health, and environmental issues to the forefront. As a result, proactive risk reduction strategies (RRSs) are commonly employed to address these issues by reducing the frequency or mitigating the consequences of potential incidents. Among these strategies, inherent safety, which is a proactive measure of loss prevention and risk management, is considered to be the most effective method. This review aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of RRSs for achieving inherency, as well as techniques for evaluating the performance of inherent safety, health, and environmental aspects. Background information is presented, including the development and implementation of the inherently safer process design, as well as the approaches for achieving inherently healthier and environmentally friendlier processes. Subsequently, the execution approaches and practical applications of other RRSs are discussed to highlight the distinctiveness and benefits of inherent safety. Next, this study examined the characteristics of inherency assessment tools (IATs) based on available information at different process stages. Furthermore, the evaluation methods and historical development of IATs are investigated from the perspectives of safety, occupational health, and environmental considerations, followed by a statistical analysis of IATs. It is concluded that the no-chemical hazards-based IATs have not been extensively studied yet, which may improve the safety level of process plants from the perspective of comprehensive inherency risk reduction. As a way forward, future research opportunities are proposed to promote the implementation of greater optimized risk management.