Occupational Safety and Health and Chemical Hazards Sectional Committee, CHD 8

FOREWORD

This Indian Standard “wasadopted by the Bureau of Indian Standards after the draft finalized by Occupational Safety
and Health and Chemical Hazards Sectional Committee had been approved by the Chemical Division Council. I
With the progressive advances in technology, the continuing trend towards larger and more highly integrated production
units, and the ever-increasing demand by governmental and public bodies for improved safety and environmental
standards, hitherto conventional methods of design based on established principles and Codes of practice are no longer
adequate in themselves for ensuring acceptable standard of safety in process industry. A-sa preventive measure of
minimizing the chance of accident to occur in hazardous installations and thereby reducing the possibility of injury,
loss of material and degradation of the environment, it is necessary to use more searching and systematic methods for
risk control to supplement existing procedures. The inherent property of material used in the process and the processes
themselves pose the potential hazard in any hazardous installation and a comprehensive risk assessment is needed for
effective management of risk, which needs to be identified, assessed and eliminated or controlled. The techniques
should be used from the conception of a project and must be used periodically throughout the life of an installation to
the point of decommissioning. The assessment of hazards is carried out by combination of hazard analysis, consequence
analysis and probability calculations.
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Prevention of human and property losses is integral to the operation and management of chemical process plants. This
may be achieved through the selection of a technology that is inherently safe. Alternatively safety of plant design and/
or operation can be audited by the application of hazard identification and risk analysis techniques, and adopting
measures suggested by the analysis. The latter approach constitutes Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA).

This Code of practice is intended for safety professionals and engineers in the areas of chemical plant safety to upgrade
safety performance of the plants and covers the methods of identi~ing, assessing and reducing hazards including
evaluation and selection of methods for particular applications. A few useful techniques are elaborated with worked out
examples.

In the formulation of this standard, considerable assistance has been derived fi-omthe following publications:
a) Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures, Centre for Chemical Process Safety, American Institute of
Chemical Engineers, 1992. I
b) Guidelines for Chemical Process Quantitative Risk Analysis, Centre for Chemical Process Safety, American
Institute of Chemical Engineers, 2000.
c) The Mend Index, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) PLC, 1993.
d) DOW’s Fire and Explosion Index - Hazard Classification Guide, American Institute of Chemical Engineers,
1994.
e) DOW’s Chemical Exposure Index Guide, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1994.
f) Methods for Determination of Possible Damage to People and Objects Resulting from Release of Hazardous
Materials — Committee for the Prevention of Disasters caused by Dangerous Substances, The Hague, 1992,
TNO.
g) Methods for Calculation of Physical Effects — Committee for the Prevention ofDisasters caused by Dangerous
Substances, The Hague, 1997, TNO.

The composition of the technical committee responsible for formulating this standard is given at Annex G.
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For the purpose of deciding whether a particular requirement of this standard is compl ied with, the final value, observed
or calculated, expressing the result of a test or analysis, shall be rounded off in accordance with 1S2: 1960 ‘Rules for
rounding off numerical values (revised)’. The number of significant places retained in the rounded off value shall be
the same as that of the specified value in this standard.

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 IS 15656:2006

Indian Standard
HAZARD IDENTIFICATION AND
RISK ANALYSIS — CODE OF PRACTICE

1 SCOPE 2.2 Basic Event — A fault tree event that is sufllciently

This Code describes specific techniques to prevent human basic that no “firther development is necessary.
and property losses in the operation and managi+mentof
process plant. The overall methodology presented in this 2.3 Consequence — A measure of the expected effects
Code allows systematic identification of hazards as well of an incident.
as quantification of the risks associated with the operation
of process plants. Applied with due expertise and rigour 2.4 Explosion —A sudden release of energy characterized
the prescribed methodology can help the user understand by accompaniment of a blast wave.
the relative levels of hazards and risk potential in an
installation. This aids the selection and prioritization of 2.5 External Event — An event caused by a natural hazard
necessary strategies for accident prevention and limiting (earthquake, flood, etc) or man-induced events (aircraft
their consequences. Therefore, the Code can be used for crash, -sabotage, etc).
improving plant safety performance as well as to reduce
human and property losses. Risk analysis is a process that 2.6 Fire — A process of combustion characterized by
consists of a number of sequential steps as follows: heat or smoke or flame or any combination of these.

a) Hazard Identljication — Identi&ing sources of

2.7 Frequency — The number of occurrences of an event
process accidents involving release of hazardous
per unit of time.
material in the atmosphere and the various -ways
(that is scenarios) they could occur.
2.8 Hazard — A characteristic of the system/plant process
b) Consequence Assessment — Estimating the that represents a potential for an accident causing damage
probable zone of impact of accidents as well as the to people, property or the environment.
scale and/or probability of damages with respect to
human beings and plant equipment and other 2.9 .Initiating Event — The first event in an event
structures. sequence.
c) Accident Fyequency Assessment — Computation
of the average likelihood of accidents. 2.10 Mitigation System — Equipment and/or procedures
designed to respond to an accident event sequence by
d) Risk Estimation — Combining accident
interfering with accident propagation and/or reducing the
consequence and frequency to obtain risk
accident consequence.
distribution within and beyond a process plant.

This Code describes the essential nature of each of the 2.11 Probability — An expression for the likelihood of
above sequence of steps and describes a variety of occurrence of an event or an event sequence during an
techniques for identi~ing hazards and the quantification interval of time or the likelihood of the success or failure
of accident consequence and the t?equency towards the of an event on test or on demand.
final risk estimation.
u 2.12 Risk — A measure of potential economic loss or
The Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) is most applicable human injury in terms of the probability of the loss or
and provides meaningfid results when a plant is built, injury occurring and the magnitude of the loss or inju~-if
operated and maintained as per design intent and good it occurs.
engineering practices.
2.13 Top Event — The unwanted event or incident at the
2 TERMINOLOGY top of a fault tree that is traced downward to more basic
failures using logic gates to determine its causes and
For the purpose of this Code, the following technical terms
likelihood
used are interpreted and understood as given below.
2.14 Worst Case Consequence — A conservative (high)
2.1 Accident — A specific unplanned event or sequence estimate of the consequences of the most severe accident
of events that has undesirable consequences. identified.