Use of incident databases for cause and consequence analysis and national estimates

Many incidents have occurred because industries have ignored past incidents or failed to learn lessons from the past. Incident databases provide an effective option for managing large amounts of information about the past incidents. Analysis of data stored in existing databases can lead to useful conclusions and reduction of chemical incidents and consequences of incidents. An incident database is a knowledge based system that can give an insight to the situation which led to an incident. Effective analysis of data from a database can help in development of information that can help reduce future incidents: cause of an incident, critical equipment, the type of chemical released, and the type of injury and victim. In this research, Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance (HSEES) database has been analyzed focusing on manufacturing events in Texas from 1993-2004. Between thirteen to sixteen states have participated in the HSEES incident reporting system and it does not include all the near miss incidents. Petroleum related incidents are also excluded from the HSEES system. Studies show that HSEES covers only 37% of all incidents in the US. This scaling ratio was used to estimate the total universe size.