Vol 31 (2013)

This Volume 31 of Chemical Engineering Transactions deals on Loss Prevention and Safety Promotion in the Process Industries.
This Volume aims to be an opportunity to the reader for:
- reading new scientific results and concepts
- exchanging of best practices
- learning from experience and case studies

Nearly 40 years have gone by, since safety professionals, scientists and practitioners met on thematic areas on Loss Prevention and in this period considerable progress has been achieved in the field of safety in the process industries. The latter includes besides the chemical industry, also oil and gas, energy, pharmaceutical, food and other industries as well as the related service industry.
Despite this progress, we are still witnessing major incidents in Europe and all over the world. Therefore exchanging information and stimulating the development of new methods and the dissemination of data, implementing process safety management which may reduce the risk of fires, explosions and loss of containment in the process industries, is a must and a need.

In the meantime, innovation leads to new processes under yet unknown conditions and introducing potential new hazards from novel or emerging technologies, and materials. Hence, there is a continuous need for further research and development in the field.

Transfer to practice is as important as development of know-how, and quite some challenges are still to be addressed in order to make further progress in process safety. To name a few: closing the loop from operational experience back to design, development of sufficiently detailed models for emergency response planning, development of the resilience engineering approach, involvement of all levels of management and in particular the operational management level, and so on.

Let us therefore take the opportunity of this Volume, to learn from each other, to transfer experience and to preserve existing know-how for the benefit of the process industry and the safety of employees and the public.