Decisions and decision support for major accident prevention in the process industries

We suggest several principles for improving decision support. While many decisions today are based on a high degree of probabilistic information, we see a need to deploy more factual information to make the risk picture more relevant for both operational and instantaneous decisions. In addition, the available probabilistic information is often inaccurate; improving the probabilistic information base, through more nuanced criticality factors for example, will also be an improvement. Finally, a basic premise for improvements in the decision process, is the need to be conscious regarding what should be considered strategic, operational and instantaneous decisions.