Accidents:: A discrepancy between indicators and facts!

Despite, the overwhelming amount of currently available safety management systems (and accompanying tools) accidents with hazardous substances still occur every now and then in the process industries. In this paper a large number of recently occurred accidents in the process industries are analysed showing that reoccurring disruptions during daily operation were present in the causal path of these accidents. The reoccurring disruptions can be seen as pre-warning signals. Their existence forms a gap with the common proactive safety indicators. This gap exists of information, already present and available in daily operation, of which it is UNKNOWN (to the local assessor) that it may lead to unsafe situations/accidents, e.g. maintenance backlogs, quality reports, etc. It is argued that these reoccurring events should be considered to be included in the safety indicators after assessment by an extended body of knowledge, because these events seem to become increasingly important regarding the prevention of accidents that still occur nowadays. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.