(193d) Consider Climate Change Impacts in Your Next Hazard Analysis, the Need of a New Perspective to Review Natural Hazards for Chemical Processes.

There is no definitive evidence on how climate is impacting to the safety of chemical process facilities but it is recognized particularly in the oil & gas sector, that climate change is an important factor affecting onshore and offshore operations. In our own experience leading hazard analysis for revalidation purposes, there is a generalized perception at least in the last ten years, that the impact of natural hazards has increased on magnitude or severity as well as in some cases, in occurrence frequency. In other cases, new and relative recurrent natural hazards with the potential to cause damage to facilities, personnel or interrupt operations or delay logistics movements are occurring in geographical areas were these natural hazards or phenomena were not presented before.

It is reviewed what the climate change is and how some type of naturals hazards can be presented due to the Climate Change as a potential and credible causal factor of these natural events. It is used Mind Maps to show in a summarized, qualitative and practical way how some factors related to climate change can be correlated as cause or consequence of a natural hazard and how could be managed for process safety purposes.

Through a practical example along the oil & gas supply chain (upstream, middle-stream, downstream) is shown the use of Mind Maps in Hazard Analysis such as What.if?, HAZOP or HAZID studies to address natural hazards with potential causal factor being the Climate Change. It is also reviewed how some metrics on quantitative risk analysis can be modified when climate change is taken into account for oil & gas projects.

Finally it is also needed to review qualitatively how a chemical process or facility also contributes to the climate change in order to the hazard analysis helps to make or prepare more detailed diagnostics or predictive analysis of future impacts as well as define more realistic metrics of sustainability on how the project or facility contributes to mitigate climate change impacts.