Knowing the ‘state of safety’: practical approaches for industry and safety authorities

Chemical companies are looking for ways to gain insight into the level of safety in their company so that additional measures can be taken when necessary and the effectiveness of interventions can be measured. That said, measuring safety, health and the environment is not easy. The difficulty of knowing what will happen continues to be illustrated when serious incidents occur and are analysed such as, the ‘BP Texas city’ incident (Baker et al., 2007);the blowout and explosion of the drilling rig Deep Water Horizon on the Macondo Well (OSC,2011) and recently in the Netherlands the 2011 Chemie-pack chemical fire (Dutch Safety Board, 2012) and the Odfjell incident (Dutch Safety Board, 2013).