Abstract: Chemical Engineering is the mainstay of many industries across the world, India being no exception. The industry and their associated domains are fraught with several risks and attendant safety issues. The most cited lacunae relate to the safety risks and related issues that are attributed to process plants belonging to the petrochemical, cracker, polymer, chemical and pharmaceutical classes. While those on the higher scale have been documented exhaustively, the others in the lower echelons also merit attention. These include retail petrol dispensing units, fuel transfer modules, fire resistant motors and the like. The process industry is replete with several industrial operations involving several streams of Chemical, Electrical and Industrial Engineering. The authors have attempted to delve into the intricacies of associated risks and safety management indices. It is further intended to collate the data in a structured manner and analyse it in a manner compatible for further modelled using suitable heuristics centred on data regression and a suitable correlation coefficient to obtain an arrive at a reasonable course of action. The result is expected to produce a set of metrics related to the optimized choices which home into workable solutions and improve safety parameters that result in safer chemical process plants. These recommendations will be hopefully analysed by the Operations and Management group of the client industry to effect suitable corrective actions.

Keywords: Safety metrics, Risk, Analytical solutions, Heuristics, Correlation coefficients, Spearman’s coefficient

Pages: 171-182

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