Development of a semi-quantitative model for assessing safety resilience in process industries: A cross-sectional study based on the Delphi method with a passive defense approach

One of the ways to increase the safety factor can be based on the analysis of system resilience. The present study aimed to develop a model for assessing safety resilience in process industries with a passive defense approach based on the Delphi method.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in phase 19 of South Pars in 2018-2020.
This Delphi study was conducted in three rounds with the participation of 18 experts in the fields of chemical and process engineering, safety, occupational health and environment.

After three rounds of Delphi study, the safety resilience assessment model was developed based on the three components of preparedness, likelihood and consequence parameters. The findings showed that experimental data, technical inspection and professional competence of individuals were among effective parameters in likelihood component, parameters of human damage, property damage, process damage, environmental damage and strategic and defense damage were among the effective parameters in the consequence component and finally the parameters of hardware preparedness, software preparedness, defense preparedness and external resources were identified as effective parameters in the preparedness component. In this Delphi study, all members of the expert panel confirmed the items in the algorithm, including resilience components, existing sub-indices with 75% acceptance level.

Based on the expert panel’s opinions, the results of this Delphi study indicated that this semi-quantitatively model has good reliability for evaluating safety resilience in process industries. Therefore, the use of this model can help to give an acceptable estimate of safety resilience in the process industry.