Fundamental Safety Engineering and Risk Management Concepts, 2012/2013 by N. C. Renton, and M. J. Baker and H.

Tan

SAFETY AND RISK MEASURES 1. Introduction In the last lecture, a simple definition of the word risk was presented:
Risk = Pf E[C ]

(1)

While the above definition has achieved widespread acceptance, there are also a number of current risk measures that, while they dont fit the above definition, still give an indication of the size of the risk associated with a particular hazard. One of the features of the measures considered is their ability to allow comparisons between installations, companies, job-functions, and industries. The most common measures can be split into two broad types: Individual risk measures. Societal risk measures.

Both will be discussed in the course of this lecture.

2. The Fatal Accident Rate (FAR) The fatal accident rate (FAR) is a measure of the risk present from hazards that have experienced actual failure events that resulted in at least one fatality. The FAR is usually quoted as the number of fatalities that occur in a defined group of people per 108 hours of exposure to the activity (108 hours of exposure corresponds to roughly the total number of hours worked by 1000 people during their working lives). Some definitions are required to calculate a numerical value of the FAR. Define the population of workers in year i as wi, and the number of fatalities in year i across population wi as N(wi). If there are roughly 240 working days per annum and a shift lasts 8hrs per day, then the FAR can be quoted as follows:

FAR =

108 240 8 wi
i 1 m

N wi
i 1

(2) ,

where m is the total number of years for statistics. The form of the above equation means it is possible to compare the FAR for individual years, or sum the results from a number of years to gain the FAR for a longer time period - both approaches are valid.

Fundamental Safety Engineering and Risk Management Concepts, 2012/2013 by N. C. Renton, and M. J. Baker and H. Tan

Example: A company employs 610 individuals in year 1, 500 in year 2, and 690 in year 3. Over the course of the three year period, the company experienced 2 fatalities. What is the FAR for the three year period? Solution: The FAR can be calculated from Equation (2) as:
FAR 108 2 240 8 610 500 690

(3)

57.87 fatalities per 1108 exposure hours

Calculating the fatal accident rate requires data on historical events. This makes the measure subject to statistical uncertainty for two reasons: inhomogeneity of the data - e.g. collected across groups exposed to different tasks. Limited sample set - the event happens so infrequently there are only a few recorded instances.

Care should therefore be taken in creating an estimate of the fatal accident rate or in using other published values. It is also worth noting that the FAR does not reflect the risk associated with hazards that have not been released by a failure event, and so only gives a partial insight into the risk present. In particular, it is a poor measure of major accident hazards and other infrequent events.

3. Serious Injury Rate (SIR) The serious injury rate (SIR) is a measure of the risk present from hazards that have experienced actual failure events and the undesired human consequences in the form of serious injuries. The SIR is also quoted as a function of 1108 exposure hours, and is calculated in a very similar manner to the FAR:

SIR =

108 240 8 wi
i 1 m

S wi
i 1

(4)

where m is the total number of years for statistics, S(wi) is the number of serious injuries in year i across the population wi. Again, the SIR does not reflect the risk associated with hazards that have not been released by a failure event giving, like the FAR, only a partial insight into the level of risk present.

4. Individual Risk (IR) The Individual Risk is the probability of death in a calendar year for an individual member of a specified group. Like both FAR and SIR, the measure can be calculated for periods of time, or on a per annum basis:

Fundamental Safety Engineering and Risk Management Concepts, 2012/2013 by N. C. Renton, and M. J. Baker and H. Tan

IR =

w
i 1

N wi
i 1

(5) ,

where m is the total number of years for statistics, N(wi) is the number of deaths in year i across the population wi. Example: A service company employs 2000 individuals in year 2004; 1850 in 2005; and, 2110 in 2006. During that period the company experiences 1 fatality in 2004, none in 2005, and 1 in 2006. Calculate the IR for the period. Solution: Using Equation (5), the IR for the period 2004-06 is (1+0+1)/(2000+1850+2110)=0.000336

5. Annual Fatality Rate (AFR) The AFR is often defined as the best estimate (expected value) of the predicted number of fatalities per year for the plant, or activity. Note that this expected number is not required to be an integer, and can be considerably less than unity. It is a simpler measure than the FAR, as it does not reflect the number of people exposed per annum:

AFR =

1 m N wi m i 1

(6)

where m is the total number of years for statistics. Example: A company experiences 1 fatality in 2004, no fatalities in 2005, 2006 or 2007. The AFR is (1+0+0+0)/4 = 0.25 fatalities per annum.

6. Potential Loss of Life (PLL) The potential loss of life is gained from the AFR and a time period of interest. It is the expected number of fatalities within an operational time period of interest, To, in the future:
PLL =AFR To

(7)

7. Societal Risk and F-N Curves It is well understood that some accidents can be more severe than others. The Buncefield explosion in 2005 was many times the magnitude of the explosion at Flixborough in 1974; however there were no fatalities in the first event and the second killed 28 people and injured 36. The distribution of fatalities

Fundamental Safety Engineering and Risk Management Concepts, 2012/2013 by N. C. Renton, and M. J. Baker and H. Tan

per accident in a particular industry or activity is of interest and gives an insight into the societal risk. The term Societal Risk is used in a number of different ways, but here it will be used to describe the frequencies of multiple-fatality accidents. One way of representing the frequency of N-or-more fatalities is through the use of an F-N curve [1, 2]. Two concepts are involved in an F-N curve. The F is the annual frequency with which a particular type of fatal event occurs. The N is the number of fatalities caused by a particular failure event. The F-N curve plots annual event frequency against N or more fatalities in the event. An example illustrates the ideas. Example: The following data set of fatal accident events across a national industry is available for the time period 2004-2007: 2004: 4 events with 1, 1, 3, 2 fatalities respectively ( 1 in the first event, 1 in the second event, 3 in the third event, and 2 in the fourth event). 2005: 3 events with 6, 2, 1 fatalities. 2006: 5 events with 1, 1, 1, 2, 1 fatalities. 2007: 2 events with 1, 1 fatalities.

Looking at 2004, it is possible to calculate the number of events with N-or-more fatalities as; 4 events with 1 or more fatalities; 2 events with 2 or more fatalities; 1 event with 3 or more fatalities. This calculation is repeated for all years. The annual frequency for each type of event is then calculated by averaging the number of events with N-or-more fatalities across the number of years in the data set. Taking 1-or-more as an example: in 2004 there are 4 events with 1 or more; 3 in 2005; 5 in 2006; 2 in 2007; hence (4+3+5+2)/4 = 3.5. Hence; for 1 or more fatalities F = 3.5. The full results for the example are shown in Table (1). The final step is to plot F against N or more fatalities to give the F-N curve, shown in Figure 1.

Year 2004 2005 2006 2007 Average rate 1 or more 4 3 5 2 3.5 2 or more 2 2 1 0 1.25

Type of fatal event 3 or more 4 or more 5 or more 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

6 or more 0 1 0 0 0.25

7 or more 0 0 0 0 0

0.5 0.25 0.25 Table 1: Calculation of Example F-N Data

Fundamental Safety Engineering and Risk Management Concepts, 2012/2013 by N. C. Renton, and M. J. Baker and H. Tan

Accidents per year with N-or-More Fatalities (yr-1)

3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Number of Fatalities, N Figure 1, Example F-N Curve

F-N curves are a much broader measure than those looked at in the lecture so far. Plotting an F-N curve requires a large data set of failure events that have resulted in a fatality or fatalities. They are used to indicate the effect of a particular hazard on society, and give an insight into the performance of the control measures used. Similar curves to the one shown in Fig.(1) have been developed for whole industries and activities, examples are contained in Evans[5] (See Figure 1, page 10 of [5] as an example of cross industry comparisson and Figure 2 on page 18 of [5] as an example of use in within industry comparison). On a practical note, it is typical for the data to be plotted on double logarithmic scale due to the large data sets involved. The curves are a useful way of comparing industries, however, they have also been used in the past to judge whether or not risk is being reduced to a level that is as low reasonably practicable (This is the legal requirement in the U.K. as stipulated in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.) through the use of so-called criterion lines (For example, see Figure D1, page 58 of [6]). This use of F-N curves has been challenged by some authors [3, 4] as it does not conform with decision theory, which has demonstrated that it is the expectation (or average) fatalities per accident that should be used to determine the optimum investment in control measures [7].

Fundamental Safety Engineering and Risk Management Concepts, 2012/2013 by N. C. Renton, and M. J. Baker and H. Tan

F-N curves are however, an excellent way of measuring the performance of particular activities, and help the safety engineer and public alike in understanding the relative difference between industries and activities. In using historical data, F-N curves suffer the same limitation as the previous measures; namely that they only reflect hazards that have been released through failure events, they do not show the risk associated with hazards that have not yet experienced a failure event and so are only a partial measure of the risk present. There have also been concerns raised about using the curves to set targets [3, 4] for risk performance. The F-N curve is however a useful tool for making comparisons between activities and industries.

References [1] D. O. Hagon. Use of frequency-consequence curves to examine the conclusions of published risk analysis and to define broad criteria for major hazard installations. Chemical Engineering Research and Design, 62(6):381386, 1984. [2] H. Romer, P. Haastrup, and H. J. Styhr Petersen. Accidents during marine transport of dangerous goods. distribution of fatalities. Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 8(1):2934, 1995. [3] A. W. Evans and N. Q. Verlander. What is wrong with criterion FN-lines for judging the tolerability of risk? Risk Analysis, 17(2):157168, 1997. [4] I. L. Hirst. Risk assessment. a note on f-n curves, expected numbers of fatalities, and weighted indicators of risk. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 57(1-3):169175, 1998. [5] A. W. Evans. RR073-Transport fatal accidents and FN-curves:1967-2001. Health and Safety Executive., 2003. URL www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr073.pdf. [6] Health and Safety Executive. The tolerability of risk from nuclear power stations. HMSO, 1992. [7] D. V. Lindley. Making Decisions. 1985.