Techniques of hazard identification

The identification of hazards before they cause an accident is central to all accident prevention activities. However, hazard identification is not an exact science but a subjective activity where the measure of the hazard identified will vary from person to person depending on their experiences, attitude to risks, familiarity with the process, etc. By repeating, or employing a range of, identification techniques the number of residual hazards will be reduced. It is doubtful if they will all ever be totally eliminated. 

The findings of each inspection should be recorded so they can be referred to when deciding remedial action needed and for comparison with previous inspections. 

There are a number of identification techniques from which to select the one that is likely to be most effective in a particular organization or which will provide the information required in respect of a particular process. They include  

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Another well-known technique of hazard identification is the HAZOP (HAZard and OPerability) method. With this method, hazards are identified and analyzed using sessions with operational experts. At the same time, the experts come up with potential solutions and measures to cope with the identified hazards (Kletz, 1999). The advantage of HAZOP with respect to the functional approach is that also nonfunctional hazards are identified during the brainstorm with operational experts. However, in applying HAZOP, one needs to take care that hazard analysis and solution activities do not disturb the hazard identification process, which could leave certain hazards unidentified or inappropriately solved . Leaving such latent hazards in a design typically is known to be very costly in safety critical operation. 

Where a major decision regarding cost or safety implication has to be made, it has become increasingly difficult to defend the traditional qualitative process called engineering judgement . Thus, there has been a steady trend towards quantifying risks and/or costs, in particular the techniques of HAZard IDentification (HAZID), Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), have come very much to the fore. 

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