TABLE OF CONTENTS Analysis of fatality risk is one of the crucial elements of a full Quantified Risk Analysis. There is insufficient amount of data available for important parts of this analysis, and there is extensive uncertainty about some of the results. It is therefore an important element requiring thorough discussion, and consideration of the various options available to assess the risk of fatalities.
The presentation of risk to personnel is virtually without exception focused on fatality risk, in spite of the fact that the accident statistics from PSA shows that the ratio of fatalities to injuries for exploration and production during the last 10 years is about 1:1400. It might be argued that the primary focus should be on injuries, these being in much higher number.
But, as this chapter will demonstrate, modelling fatalities is very complex and is as such a sufficiently large challenge. Including the assessment of injuries in the QRA would be extremely difficult, and would probably be counter productive.
There is also some justification for omitting injuries. QRA is primarily focused on major hazards, and in these cases there is probably a relatively fixed average (at least for each accident type) relationship between the number of injuries and fatalities, although this ratio is unknown. If we can assess the fatality risk and focus on risk reducing measures, then implicitly we will probably also reduce the risk of having injuries although perhaps not to the same extent.
When we address the...
