Useful Tools
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ISO 31000:2018 (EN) Risk Management Guidelines.
This is a copy of Figure 1 of ISO 3100:2018 which illustrates the Principles, Framework and Process of an integrated approach to Risk Management. An online browsable version, with full explanation is available on the ISO website
Lessons Learned
Trevor Kletz Safety Newsletters
The UK IChemE have made these available online. A great mine of information that reminds us that so little is new, not least the mistakes people make.
CCPS Process Safety Beacons
The American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Centre for Chemical Process Safety publishes a monthly newsletter, in multiple languages, each dealing with a theme relevant to process safety.
EPSC European Process Safety Centre
Excellent source of Learning Sheets from industry incidents and a Process Safety Fundamentals booklet that can be downloaded in multiple languages
Energy Institute PSM Toolbox
The UK Energy Institute Toolbox provides a rich variety of incidents and associated lessons learned searchable by activity type and industry. It's even available in six different languages.
CSB Investigations
The Chemical Safety Board is a federal agency that undertakes, and publishes, independent investigations into chemical industry accidents in the USA. Many major investigations include supporting videos/ animations.
YouTube Safety Training Videos
This is a collection of Safety Videos, mainly but not limited to, CSB created content that are useful for teaching Process Safety Management or as Safety Moments.
Book List
Ever wondered what to read next?
This is my personal library with comments. It's provided to give a diverse range of views on risk, covering social sciences and business risk as well as major hazards. It's presented in alphabetical order by author(s) and gets updated on an ad-hoc basis. Currently at V5.
I'd welcome comments including any suggested additions that I can go read, or different views on any of the books I've listed
History:
V5 - Corrected entry for Wishart ( Show me the Money, Honey), added Pirsig (Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Lila, An inquiry into Morals)
and Easthope (When the Dust Settles). Split list into two
V4 - Added Gladwell (Outliers)
V3 - Alphabetically listed and added Gladwell (Blink); Tetlock & Gardner (Superforcasting); Kahneman, Sibony & Sunstein (Noise)
V2 - Rankings removed and added Wilde (Target Risk 3); Taleb (AntiFragile); Risk Analysis (Flaus); Catastrophe and Systemic Change (Kernick)
| Book Title | Author | ISBN | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Risk | Adams, John | 978 185 728 06 85 185 728 06 87 | One of the early advocates of Risk Compensation theory explaining the research and background. This remains a controversial issue with papers published dismissing/ discounting the analysis. However, I would contend it is a real (psychological) heuristic but the outcomes are not well understood as the impact of compensation is typically felt through risk transfer. For example, car safety improvements reduced risk to drivers making them less risk aware with increased fatalities amongst non car users whilst still reducing the fatal accident rate for the drivers. - See also Wilde, Gerald J.S. Target Risk 3 |
| The management of Risk to Society from a potential accidents | Allen, FR; Garlick A.R; Hayns M.R; Taig A.R | 185 166 89 26 | The first, and still the best explained book on societal risk. I worked with 3 of the authors |
| World at Risk | Beck, Ulrich | 978 074 564 20 17 074 564 20 12 | Social Scientist outlook on risk. A tough read. Gives some interesting insights in to risk perceptions and relationships between risk owners (those gaining benefit from the risk taken) and risk victims (those suffering loss due to the risk taken). Also considers the disconnect felt be people due to the inability fo the nation state to now manage or address the risks that are transnational by nature (e.g. terrorism, global warming, financial crisis) |
| Against the gods: The remarkable history of risk | Bernstein, Peter | 978 047 129 56 31 047 129 56 39 | Excellent book covering commercial risk. Its lack of consideration of the history of numeric techniques for safety analysis is its only weakness! |
| UPM 3.1: A pragmatic approach to Dependent Failure Analysis | Brand, V.P | SRD-R-13, 1996 | Accessible workbook approach to dependent failure analysis (common mode/ common cause failure) collated by Paul Brand, one of my old colleagues |
| An Introduction to Fire Dynamics | Drysdale, Dougal | 978 047 031 90 31 047 031 90 38 | The best textbook I've found on all aspects for Fire Dynamics. |
| When the Dust Settles | Easthope, Lucy | 978 1 529 35824 7 | Easthope is a disaster recovery specialist with global experience of managing major accidents in the twilight phase that exists as the emergency response starts to ramp down but a lot of effort is required to ascertain what happened and to recover the scene to a situation where operations can resume. This book is her memoir and provides a unique insight into the discipline and a number of major incidents from 2001 onwards. |
| Risk Analysis Socio-Technical & Industrial Systems | Flaus, Jean-Marie | 978-1-84821-492-7 | Some interesting snippets but lacks adequate research so presents partial and occasionally inaccurate/ misleading information. More generally, interesting to read as written from a French perspective and therefore provides good guidance on French, and French influenced approaches, most notably ARIA (European accident scales), dual factor approach to estimating the probability of a given consequence. Excellent chapter on ISO 31000 but not enough to let me recommend this book due to the flaws. Most notably:- 1. Does not recognise full history of QRA, missing the work by Pugh and Farmer for UKAEA 2. Does not mention early Dutch work on risk based approaches to facility siting 3. Does not explain the history of offshore QRA that started in Norway. 4. Section on FTA does not mention Boolean reduction 5. States Ishikawa cannot be used on "higher complexity systems" which is not accurate - I've used them to assess/assure SCE on an FSU 6.Does not explain the difference between English (Common Law) and European legal systems (Roman Law with Napoleonic , Swiss and German Code) that underpins why UK ALARP is to all intents equivalent to EU ALARA whereas UK ALARA is much stricter and primarily associated only with nuclear safety. 7. Does not properly explain common cause failures dropping in to the common trap of calling utilities "common cause" as opposed to being a shared system. 8. Initially misrepresents Reason's Swiss cheese model, then corrects the error in Chapter 5 which shows poor editing. |
| Risk: The science and politics of fear | Gardner, Dan | 978 075 351 55 32 075 351 55 39 | Good, easy read. Well researched. Explains risk perceptions without delving deep in to psychology |
| Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking | Gladwell, Malcolm | 978-0-14-101459-3 | Gladwell is both an entertaining and informative writer. This book is no exception, using a range of illustrative stores and research findings to explain the issue of interest. I would suggest reading this along with Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow" and Tetlock's "Superforcasting". All three consider the difference between considered, analytical decision making and rapid, almost instinctual decisions. Gladwell mainly looks at the latter, both in terms of how the subconscious mind can be trained to make rapid decisions quickly and how it can get them badly wrong. The conclusions end up similar to Tetlock, in the need to combine both. Whereas Tetlock provides techniques to improve the analytical aspects (thinking slow) and the integration, Gladwell helps us better understand how to improve (thinking fast) subconscious decision quality not least by reducing distracting information that might be a source of bias. |
| Outliers The Story of Success | Gladwell, Malcolm | 978-0-141-03625-0 | Gladwell's book is an entertaining read, but includes some key issues not least:- - Achieving success isn't just about having talent its also about practice and luck; in particular opportunities provided though place and date of birth - Threshold effects are visible in competence both with regards training ( he introduces the threshold of 10,000 hours) and intellect (diminishing benefits of high IQ vs other personal attributes) With regards risk management the book also looks at cultural impacts, notably Korean Air's sequence of accidents attributable to Power Distance (see Hofstede) and the role of language as a means of changing workplace culture (Korean Air stopped the trend by making English the on board language, helping break the national cultural link). |
| Handbook of Loss Prevention Engineering (2 Volume set) | Haight, Joel | ASIN B00DF9DOUG | Expensive, mixed bag - some chapters good, some not as strong. Potential company buy for reference |
| The System Safety Skeptic | Hardy, Terry L | Online published | Excellent book on system safety, which includes Process Safety, covering many techniques. I don't agree with all his approaches - however, all are an excellent starting point for discussion |
| Midnight in Chernobyl | Higginbotham, Andrew | 978-150 113 4630 | Excellent detailed account of the events leading up to the accident including insights in to the social political landscape that was a root cause of a fundamental design flaw entering production along with construction shortcuts and inadequate operator training. It's a well written book , at times closer in style to a drama novel than the factual account it really represents. I got frustrated with the deep focus on names and backstories of some of the people, and occasional lighter treatment of the nuclear physics. It could also have looked deeper at the international cooperation and issues associated with making the plant safe in the years after Ukraine independence and the mafia- dominated economy of the early 90s...however that might be a later story and perhaps reflect my personal bias as I worked with some of the British nuclear engineers who helped in that phase via IAEA. It lost a point for me due to a section making some sweeping and misleading statements on Fukashima without setting the plant incident into the context of the broader damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami, including pollution from non-nuclear facilities |
| Cultures and Organizations: Software of the mind | Hofstede, Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Minkov, Michael | 978 007 166 41 89 007 166 41 81 | More a textbook than an easy read - but can just read opening chapters. Covers cultural dimensions and explains how trends can be found in large populations without needing to stereotype the individual. Also gives handy way of recognizing difference between cultures and behaviours. |
| Thinking Fast and Slow | Kahneman, Daniel | 978 014 103 35 70 014 103 35 76 | Excellent book, blend of autobiography and theory on psychology of decision making and the balance between emotional and cognitive decision paths. |
| Noise. A flaw in Human Judgement | Kahneman, Daniel Sibony, Oliver Sunstein, Cass R. | 978-0-00-830903-9 | A detailed look at the source of variability in decision making based on the variability of judgements in a range of areas, most notably legal sentencing, medicine, underwriting fees , recruitment, and more generally forecasting. The last of these is handled in greater detail by Tetlock and Gardner's book "Superforecasting". It brakes the source of noise down in to elements of Bias (consistent offset) Level Noise (consistent differences between different decision makers across all decisions), and Pattern Noise (subdivided into stable noise - differences in relative ranking of importance of issues between decision makers and Occasion noise - differences in assessment by the same decision maker on different occasions). This is, at times, a difficult read straying more to textbook than an accessible guidebook. Statistically it falls down quite quickly by discussing normal distributions then recognising that many practical applications of decision making relate to skewed distributions (see AntiFragile by Taleb) Nate Silver's book "the Signal and the Noise" is aimed more firmly at sports and is an easier first read as it only divides Noise into bias and variability. |
| Judgement under Uncertainty: Biases and Heuristics | Kahneman, Daniel Tversky, Amos | 185.4157.1124 Science, 1974 | Seminal paper - download and read Won Kahneman and Tversky the Nobel Prize for economics even though they are psychologists |
| Catastrophe and Systemic Change: Learning from the Grenfell Tower Fire and Other Disasters | Kernick, Gill | 978-1-91-3019-29-7 | Gill Kernick was a resident of Grenfell Tower but had moved out in 2014. Her book is dedicated to those lost in the fire, including 7 of her old neighbours. It explores both the fire itself, and in particular, the failures in emergency preparedness and emergency response. However, it then moves on to consider what might be causing our institutional inability to learn and ends on the hope that democratization of change, that is the need for change being driven from the grassroots, may be the answer. A worthwhile read therefore not only with respect to Grenfell but also how institutional failings can manifest and lead to disaster. |
| Book Title | Author | ISBN | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fire in the Night. The Piper Alpha Disaster | McGinty, Stephen | 978 033 047 19 30 | Should be required reading for anyone involved in offshore. Well researched, carefully written. McGinty spoke with all the survivors and many around the incident. It is the only book on Piper that seems to be universally praised. |
| The Culture Map | Meyer, Erin | 978-161 039 2501 | Meyer is a professor at INSEAD and uses personal anecdotes to illustrate her points. Ironically she unintentionally illustrates one of her own differences (American) vs Hofstede (Dutch) by failing to provide any supporting evidence as to why 8 dimensions, or scales are sufficient; the independence of the scales or detailed national listings. One of the reasons for this I suspect is her website offering, for a monthly fee, the ability to run country vs country comparisons (Hofstede lets you do this for free). If you like quick answers/ superficial reads then this offers some great insights and includes an interesting insight on differences in communication styles, in particular low context vs high context and acceptance of negative feedback that aren't addressed explicitly by Hofstede. However, the lack of supporting information on how the different aspects were derived and analysed means I still much prefer Hofstede |
| WhiteBook | N/A | UK Gov Publishing | UK MoD System Safety - great summary of functional based approach |
| Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Pirsig, R | 0-09-978640-0 | In his Author’s note Pirsig states… “What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in essence as fact. However it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It’s not very factual on motorcycles either”. This understated paragraph says more about what it isn’t than what it is. And that’s the crux – it’s hard to define a book that can be read as a road trip of discovery, as a relationship between father and son, a guide to studying (or to teaching), as a dialogue on mental illness, or as an investigation into the metaphysics of quality. A fundamental question it raises is, ‘how can we express an idea before the words exist?’ Kahneman’s book "Thinking Fast and Slow" explains this in immediate terms whereby our fast thought pathways give emotional response which may then be characterised, interpreted and if necessary overwritten by our slower, conscious thoughts. However, Pirsig is digging deeper, back to when the words hadn’t been invented to externalise those thoughts. Through this he is also defining quality as something that cannot be defined without diminishing its meaning as – just like the fast pathway – it precedes conscious thought. It’s easy to see why Pirsig focused on what the book wasn’t rather than what it was...And if you are wondering about its relevance to Technical Safety, then the answer is how isn’t it? How do we make decisions under stress, or with uncertain inputs; how do we explain those decisions after the fact, and, fundamentally, how do we teach others to explore concepts not easily placed in words especially in languages different from our own? |
| Lila An Inquiry into Morals | Pirsig, R | 0-552-99504-5 | Pirsig's second book is less well known than "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" but still worth reading. It expands on his Metaphysics of Quality and introduces two concepts that fit effectively with several other books in this reading list:- - History advances by a combination of static and dynamic patterns. The successful dynamic patterns have to latch to be sustained else fall back to the static pattern. If we extend this by recognising the static patterns as quasi-static (slowly developing) then this matches Tetlock (Superforcasting) and helps also describe some of the threshold effects described by Gladwell (Outliers) - We have to balance the needs of the individual vs the needs of the society. In particular we have to accommodate the outspoke voices as occasionally they prove to be right and proved the next dynamic pattern. This fits with Ulrich (World at Risk) and Gladwell (Outliers), and needs consideration when undertaking forecasting (see Tetlock's books) |
| The Signal and the Noise | Silver, Nate | 978 014 197 56 58 014 197 56 52 | Great book on data uncertainty and prediction of trends. Written around political forecasting and gambling |
| Process Safety Analysis - An Introduction | Skelton, R.P. | 978 085 295 37 85 | The author, Bob Skelton, moved from industry to academia, spending 10 years of his career teaching at Cambridge University. The text is easy to read and carries many practical examples and tools, including ones borrowed from his various industry contacts. For example, he presents some diagrams to explain fault tree analysis that were taken directly from AEA Technology training material, with the permission of their originator, who for a while was my boss... |
| The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable | Taleb, Nicholas | 978 014 103 45 99 014 103 45 91 | The book displays more about the author's excessive self belief than is necessary. Some nice images and analogues , such as the Black Swan and reflects the ignorance of many commercial risk analysts prior to the market crash in 2007. Vastly over rated text with gaps visible to risk purists but a good read. Stongly recommend reading Taleb's Antifragile and Beck's World at Risk instead. |
| AntiFragile: Things that Gain from Disorder | Taleb, Nicholas | 978-0141038223 | It's strength and weakness are both summed up by my making over 200 notes on my Kindle while reading it. It most certainly makes you stop and think; with frustration when he touches on areas where I have knowledge (engineering and major hazards risk) and with fascinations in areas where his expertise clearly lies (financial and political risk). For this book Taleb has taken his specific thoughts around the underprediction of rare events in financial risks (Black Swan Events), generalised them and then applied them to other areas, most notable health, banking and to a lesser extent engineering. He has defined a new term, Antifragile, as representing something that strengthens when subjected to some level of stress. If we focus narrowly on Technical Safety his work doesn't add anything new - we already understand the need for diversity and redundancy of protective layers and the issues with uncertainty in rare events (I was presenting on these issues over 15 years ago, repeating what I'd been taught 15 years before that). However, that would be to miss the point - this book helps us place this narrow knowledge in a broader context and to find a new vocabulary to help us explain the concepts to a non technical safety audience. I found one key issue with his terminology though. He takes a different angle on the asymmetry of risk from Ulrich Beck (World at Risk). Taleb focuses on the threats of large negative outcomes vs small benefits as opposed to Beck's focus on those benefiting not being those suffering the consequences. |
| Expert Political Judgement | Tetlock, Philip | 978 069 117 59 73 069 117 59 73 | Looks at political commentators and predictions, separating Fox from Hedgehog… and the issue with political commentators and media "Experts" picked to express and opinion…See also Superforecasting |
| Superforcasting: The Art and Science of Prediction | Tetlock, Philip Gardener, Dan | 978-0-804-136693 | Dan Gardner's involvement has resulted in a much more readable book than Tetlock's earlier book "Expert Political Judgement" whilst keeping the technical integrity intact. The book covers the outcomes of earlier work on forecasting by Tetlock before going through the findings of a multi-year project, sponsored by the US Intelligence agencies to improve forecasting. The earlier work shows the futility of trying to predict events 5 years out, with 3 years seeming to be about the limit of most forecasting techniques, with even that range subject to errors. The later work focused on near-term (3-12 months) predictions and establishes what can aid better forecasts. Some is familiar (combining several independent predictions), some less so (non-subject matter experts with skills in forecasting out performing experts); the role of teams ( the need to avoid group-think and dilution of independence while gaining from shared insights) it provides a good guide useable by any group to improve their forecasting - subject to the critical need of collecting data and reviewing performance. Tetlock is open about the constraints and criticism - notably Taleb (see AntiFragile on the impact of rare events ) but makes a valid case that history moves by a mixture of many small changes, and occasionally large ones - this is similar conceptually to Robert Pirsigs meta physics of quality stance, expressed in his second book "Leila" where change not only occurs gradually but sometimes by large shifts, some of which latch (Pirsig terminology) and some of which fail and fall back. The latter are often triggered by disruptors (people or technology) and their impact cannot readily be seen in advance |
| Offshore Risk Assessment | Vinnem, Jan-Erik | 978-1-4471-5206-4 and 978-1-1471-5212-5 | The first and probably still the most comprehensive book on QRA albeit with a strong bias to Norwegian offshore and therefore not as directly beneficial for onshore facilities. The history section is thorough with regards Norway offshore incidents but does not reflect the role of UKAEA in developing techniques prior to NUREG WASH 1400C, nor their role in supporting the early studies for offshore Norway. Section on Barrier Functions is informative and useful although the chapter on Macondo is both weak and reflective of the flawed DHSG Study on which Vinnem participated. An interested reader is better focusing on the "Report to the President" National Commission study that is factually accurate and adequately detailed. |
| Target Risk 3 - Risk Homeostasis in everyday life | Wilde ,Gerald J.S. | http://riskhomeostasis.org | Wilde originated the concept of Risk Homeostasis, which is also explained thoroughly by John Adams in his book Risk (ISBN 978-1-85728-068-5) Wildes's book explains the theory, the supporting evidence and its implications for a range of issues (e.g. automotive rules, as cover in more detail by Adams, regulations and occupational safety ). This is an important book that should be required reading for all risk analysts. However, the book is at its weakest when explaining what we can do to reduce overall risk appetite as it tends towards incentivising of lagging metrics (lost time injuries etc) even though these have long been shown to be ineffective due to driving unforeseen consequences, most notably under reporting. It also fails to explore the significant reductions in industrial and transportation fatal accident rates over the last 25 years (logically due to diminished risk appetite) Hence, whilst the general conclusions are well founded, more thought is needed as to how we can influence risk appetite - not least by considering cultural and societal differences (e.g. by considering the impact of Hofstede's dimensions) |
| Show me the Money, Honey | Wishart, Ian | 978 099 410 64 83 099 410 64 83 | Investigative journalist's book looking at all the various myths around foods, debunking many commonly held myths based on bad science and routinely replicated by journalists (e.g. salt is bad for you, cholesterol in the diet is bad for you…) Important read on two levels: first, we are all consumers so need to understand these issues better; second, illustrates how bad information and dumbing down can have unintended consequences that increase overall risk |
Downloadable Guidance Notes
Basic QRA Tools
Caveat Emptor
These notes pull information from many sources and were aimed to provide a working set of notes for use as part of a University course of study back in 2011 due to the absence of affordable texts. They include simplified techniques for consequence calculations some of which remain useful for quick checks but which have largely been surpassed thanks to improved computing power allowing greater use of more advanced techniques.
They are intended for training and are not presented as a definitive source. o Guarantees are provided and no reliance should be placed on any formulae, coefficients, simplifications etc. without first checking all referenced and other sources to confirm the validity and/or tolerable error of approximation.
The author bears no responsibility and offers no guarantee related to the application of these notes or any subsequent loss or error.
No intentional plagiarism has taken place but it must be recognised these notes are not original work; they only summarise original work of others. If any source information is not fairly declared then unequivocal apology is offered to the originator.
Please draw to the attention of the author any errors of notation, information or execution; plus any unintended plagiarism so this can be corrected for future versions of the notes.
Safety & Loss Prevention Engineering
Caveat Emptor
Frank Crawley has made available the full set of teaching notes he developed for the Safety and Loss Prevention MSc at Strathclyde University (1985 – 2005).
The associated Caveat Emptor on the UK IChemE site should be read and observed in full. In particular it should be noted that these notes are intended for teaching purposes, not commercial use