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• Identification of important indicators for process safety. • A comparative study of process safety indicators in developing and developed countries. • Measuring the relative importance of the indicators using the Fuzzy Best Worst Method. Introduction: The importance of safety in high-risk industries such as oil and gas facilities has been reported previously. Process safety performance indicators can provide insight into improving the safety of process industries. This paper aims to rank the process safety indicators (metrics) by Fuzzy Best-Worst Method (FBWM) using the data gathered through a survey. Method: The study uses a structured approach considering the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), and the IOGP (International Association of Oil and Gas Producers) recommendations and guidelines to generate an aggregate set of indicators. It calculates the level of importance of each indicator based on the opinions of experts from Iran and some Western countries. Results: The findings of the study demonstrate that some lagging indicators such as the number of times processes do not proceed as planned due to insufficient staff competence and the number of unexpected disruptions of the process due to failure in instrumentation and alarms are important in process industries in both Iran and Western countries. Western experts identified process safety incident severity rate as an important lagging indicator, whereas Iranian experts considered this as relatively unimportant. In addition, leading indicators such as sufficient process safety training and competency, the desired function of instrumentation and alarms, and proper management of fatigue risk play an important role in enhancing the safety performance of process industries. Experts in Iran viewed permit to work as an important leading indicator, while experts in the West focused on fatigue risk management. Practical Applications: The methodology used in the current study gives a good view to managers and safety professionals in regard to the most important indicators of process safety and allows them to focus more on important process safety indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dependency of the society on the hydrocarbon as an energy source has increased tremendously, leading to the rapid development of this process industry. A fire accident that occurred on the 6th of July 2016 at a petrochemical complex plant in the southern part of Iran, Mahshahr petrochemical zone, has called for a more robust and all-inclusive efforts toward ameliorating and forestalling future occurrence. The on-site investigations concluded that the fire was triggered by the leakages through the ruptured blind flange gasket in the pipeline. Thus, certain inquiries on the development of robust process safety technologies gave useful insight into those capable enough to identify and handle various uncertainties in the short and long time basis, to forestall catastrophic accidents. Therefore, it is worthy and pertinent to ascertain whether process safety technology is developing correspondingly at the same pace with the process industry. Are the correct things done in the right way? If yes, then why do these catastrophic accidents keep happening? If no, how can these uncertainties in the process be properly and adequately handled, contained and managed? Failure to provide adequate and incontrovertible answers to these questions toward taking uncompromising safety actions is an invitation to more accidents in the near future. In this study, explanation on how to identify and cope with various uncertainties in process safety science is provided through learning from a real case study of a fire accident that occurred in the aforementioned petrochemical plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]