Continuous improvement strategies for environmental risk mitigation in chemical plants

Abstract Environmental risk management for chemical plants requires appropriate data resources and decision-making methods. To mitigate environmental risks in industrial operations, technologies and measures should be evaluated based on cost, health, and ecosystem considerations. This work develops an integrated framework for implementing continuous improvements strategies for environmental risk mitigation in chemical plants. First, we establish a general and hierarchical indicator system to identify the risks which come from inherent process safety and operations management, chemicals storage, and transportation. Next, we propose a qualitative analysis method for identifying risk points that could potentially result in health and environmental problems. Then, we quantitatively analyze the risk points by using the best–worst method (BWM), which enables the users to obtain the criticality of each risk point. Countermeasures to mitigate environmental risks can thus be evaluated and prioritized based on their costs and implementation durations. Finally, we study a pharmaceutical intermediate plant to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework. Considering the funds and countermeasure costs, this method can help decision makers determine the best countermeasures to mitigate the environmental risks of any industrial plant.