Absolute and relative ranking approaches for comparing and communicating industrial accidents

摘要

To compare industrial accidents and communicate on their consequences and nature, quantita- tive measures have to be used. What is usually done is to put the values of the descriptors of an accident into a categorisation scheme and then compare them with an absolute system of reference (absolute ranking of accidents). In this paper, based on approaches developed within the Europeran Union for accidental events causing major emissions, fires or explosions, a new method of scaling By means of the relative ranking of the values of the quantitative measures describing such events Is presented.