Design of an alarm and risk management in chemistry. Some lessons learned from interdisciplinary research

Pascal Beguin (1) , Marc Kazmierczak (2) , Robert Cottura (1) , J. Leininger (1) , Patricia Vicot (2)

1 Laboratoire d'ergonomie
2 INERIS - Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques

In this communication, we would like to contribute some elements from inderdisciplinary research whose purpose was to develop an aid system designed to prevent "chemical runaways" taking place along with their consequences at human level (death), environmental level (SEVESO type companies) and industrial level (destruction of installations). This project follows an inquiry we made into a chemical runaway in a nuclear plant in 1994. The accident was fatal for one operator. In this case, two hours before the explosion, the operators realised that something was wrong. The five operators tried to get out of the unit a few seconds before the explosion. This type of result (which was largely confirmed by other analyses) shows that process operators often think that the time they have before an explosion is more than it really is. Our aim was the design of a system that would warn operators of the arrival of a chemical runaway and would predict the time remaining until an imminent explosion.

Domains: Environmental Sciences

Pascal Beguin, Marc Kazmierczak, Robert Cottura, J. Leininger, Patricia Vicot. Design of an alarm and risk management in chemistry. Some lessons learned from interdisciplinary research. 3rd International Workshop of Human Error Safety and System Development, Jun 1999, Liège, Belgium. pp.115-120. ⟨ineris-00972163⟩