INHERENTLY SAFER DESIGN ACTIVITIES OVER THE PAST DECADE

This paper identifies significant developments in the field of inherently safer design over the previous decade (roughly from the late 1990s to the present). The paper is therefore a review of the literature on inherent safety over this time period, and is organized into eight major topics: (i) the positioning of inherent safety within the hierarchy of controls, (ii) major reviews of the subject area, (iii) process intensification, with an emphasis on reactors and unit operations, (iv) examples of the application of inherent safety principles other than intensification (e. g., substitution), (v) measurement of the level or degree of inherent safety, (vi) the relationship between inherent safety and process safety management, including safety culture, (vii) the role of inherent safety in dust explosion prevention and mitigation, and (viii) case studies of incidents where a lack of inherent safety considerations played a role in causation.