These are challenging times due to the need to contrast climate change with new decarbonized technologies and with adaptation strategies, as well as to raise the safety and security of production and storage sites. New opportunities and new vulnerabilities proceed hand in hand with the advancement of IT technologies and data analytics. Smart and interconnected systems unlock the potential of new production processes, but need to contrast the risk of complex cascading events.
Transfer to practice is as important as the development of know-how, and many challenges still need to be addressed in order to make further progress in safety, and process safety in particular. To name a few: developing worldwide databases of near-misses and accidents able to provide an effective support to data analytics and lesson learning, addressing climate-related risks bridging climate models to Natech scenario modelling and prevention, developing user-friendly and effective models for cascading events in security and cyber-security scenarios, further developing resilience engineering, harmonized education of process safety, economic theories and models into safety and security decision making, develop specific approaches to unfold the potential of artificial intelligence applied to process safety.
Bruno Fabiano, Valerio Cozzani (Guest Editors)
