IChemE opens Hazards archive

IChemE has opened up its archive of papers presented at the Hazards conference series. All 700 papers and posters presented at Hazards between 1960 and 2006 are now freely available to view, study and download.

In addition, proceedings from another six IChemE safety-related conferences have also been made public, dealing with runaway reactions, exothermic reactions, pressure hazards, the prevention of accidents, and major hazards.

Martin Goose, IChemE Fellow and member of the Institution’s Safety and Loss Prevention Subject Group says: “Hazards was the first conference on the ways of controlling hazards anywhere in the world. In the fifty years since, it has seen tremendous growth both in the number of papers and the number of delegates. This underlines how vitally important safety is to the process industries.”

The initial conferences were largely collections of research and other technical papers which attempted to understand the reasons behind the fires and explosions in the process industry, but as time has progressed more papers have been given on the preventative side of safety covering topics such as inherently safer design, safety management systems, risk assessments and analyses, and the human behavioural aspects of safety in the process industry.

The most recent Hazards conference took place in April in Liverpool, UK and attracted over 400 delegates. In September, Hazards will be staged in Asia Pacific for the first time with more than 250 attendees expected at Hazards AP, a two-day event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Claudia Flavell-While, director of publications at IChemE, says: “It’s an often heard complaint that history repeats itself and the vast majority of accidents could have been prevented if only the lessons from previous incidents had been more widely shared and understood. IChemE’s decision to make its archived proceedings freely available underscores our determination and that of our members to help make the process industries as safe as they can possibly be.”

View the Hazards archive here