A Safety Performance Assessment Framework for the Petroleum Industry’s Sustainable Development Based on FAHP-FCE and Human Factors
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Safety in petroleum companies is a way of promoting their improvement. Authors demonstrated methods that can be used to measure HSE performance levels in such companies, which is valuable applicative contribution as HSE performance assessments in petroleum industry are always time-consuming because of many evaluation parameters. Authors used fuzzy evaluation methods to address this problem, and to improve the predictability safety performance trends. The paper also opens the new space for research - that is in big data processing and, in general, design of the database and the filtering of most important parameters to assess HSE performance in petroleum business.
In conclusions, authors also warned about weaknesses in their analysis - too many factors, the lack of a standardized database system, data quality etc.
I think these conclusions are extremely valuable, however, I'd appreciate if authors revised their conclusion to shorten the text, and to make it more concise (eg. to list and number the most important conclusions), to improve the overall quality of the paper.
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
I am very grateful to your comments for the manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. I hope this revision can make my paper more acceptable. We have revised the manuscript according to your kind advices and referee s detailed suggestions.
The revisions were addressed point by point below.
Comment 1:
(x) English language and style are fine/minor spell check required
Response 1:
We are very sorry for our incorrect writing and grammar, I sent the paper to a native English-speaking editor of MDPI to correct my mistakes. I can provide proof if needed.
Comment 2: In conclusions, authors also warned about weaknesses in their analysis - too many factors, the lack of a standardized database system, data quality etc. I think these conclusions are extremely valuable, however, I'd appreciate if authors revised their conclusion to shorten the text, and to make it more concise (eg. to list and number the most important conclusions), to improve the overall quality of the paper.
Response 2:
I revised the conclusion of my manuscript and deleted some meaningless parts to shorten the text and make it more concise. I also added some conclusions related to the oil industry to make them more professional, such as in China, human factors are more common than equipment failure in oil industry accidents, but often lead to more serious consequences. However, in the United States, the major factor in safety incidents is equipment failure, the human factor is about 37 percent.
At the same time, I listed and numbered the most important relevant conclusions. Finally, in order to make the conclusion more concise, I list the limitations separately.
Reviewer 2 Report
Review of "Safety Performance Assessment Framework for Petroleum Industry Sustainable Development Based on FAHP-FCE and Human Factors"
The manuscript is very well written and organized. It tackles are very interesting and relevant topic, safety performance in the oil industry. It would be interesting to see data and statistics of occupational injuries and accidents in the oil industry in general and in specific in the Chinese company used in the case of study and how the data compares with human assessment/subjectiveness.
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
I am very grateful to your comments for the manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. I hope this revision can make my paper more acceptable. We have revised the manuscript according to your kind advices and referee s detailed suggestions.
The revisions were addressed point by point below.
Comment 1:
English language and style are fine/minor spell check required
Response 1:
We are very sorry for our incorrect writing and grammar, I sent the paper to a native English-speaking editor of MDPI to correct my mistakes. I can provide proof if needed.
Comment 2: Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?
Response 2:
I deleted some meaningless relevant references and added 9 references, including journals such as safety science, expert systems with applications, journal of loss prevention in the process industries and so on.
I also added the background of oil industry accidents and development. The second and third paragraphs in the introduction explained the causes of oil industry accidents in detail. Some cases of famous oil accidents are also analyzed. For example, the causes of the BP Texas City oil refinery and Piper Alpha disaster accidents are analyzed, and the database of The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (CCBS) was used to support the analysis.
Comment 3: It would be interesting to see data and statistics of occupational injuries and accidents in the oil industry in general and in specific in the Chinese company used in the case of study and how the data compares with human assessment/subjectiveness.
Response 3:
Section 5.2 has been added to the discussion section (Comparing the data of the oil industry and human assessment), it includes the annual accident and occupational injury statistics report in the RMP database (see 5.2.1 and 5.2.2).
Table 5 shows the total number of U.S. petrochemical accident and occupational injury from the RMP databases from 1994 to 2009. Figure 3 shows the different causes leading to oil accidents in the RMP database. In the United States, the major cause of accidents in the oil industry is equipment failure, followed by human error. Equipment failure, to some degree, this is inevitable. However, human error is completely avoidable in China.
Therefore, the objective data compares with human subjective assessment, about 37% of the human factor is analyzed in detail and ranked to find the most important factors. So as to reduce the accidents and occupational injuries caused by human error.
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper deals with important issues to sustainability - safety performance of oil refinery industry. The paper is well written presents comprehensive overview of large number of references. My main recommendation for his paper is to present discussion of achieved results with other studies dealing with sustainability assessment of oil refinery projects. The strengths and weaknesses of applied approach also need to be emphasized and compared with approaches applied in other studies. There is no discussion section in this paper. It is necessary. Conclusions also need to be rewritten then the section on discussion of results is added.
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
I am very grateful to your comments for the manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. I hope this revision can make my paper more acceptable. We have revised the manuscript according to your kind advices and referee s detailed suggestions.
The revisions were addressed point by point below.
Comment 1: My main recommendation for his paper is to present discussion of achieved results with other studies dealing with sustainability assessment of oil refinery projects.
Response 1:
I added the discussion of achieved results with other studies dealing with sustainability assessment of oil refinery projects. In the introduction, the second paragraph analyses the causes of some famous oil accidents. For example, the root causes of the BP Texas City oil refinery and Piper Alpha disaster accidents are analyzed. All these are related to the sustainable safety development of the oil industry. In the third paragraph, the database of The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (CCBS) was used to support the analysis. The CCBS indicating that there is an inverse relationship between the number of safety communications made by oil refinery employees and the accident rate. Finally, reduce the occurrence of accidents in the oil industry by means of human factors. Furthermore, in Section 5.2 discusses the accident and injury statistics report in the United States in the RMP database.
Comment 2: The strengths and weaknesses of applied approach also need to be emphasized and compared with approaches applied in other studies.
Response 2:
1. Applied approach of this paper compared with approaches applied in other studies. (include the strengths of applied approach)
The AHP has been widely applied in many petroleum enterprises for sustainable safety assessment. I have added Section 2.3, which introduces the calculation steps of AHP. In Section 5.1.1, a FAHP and original AHP are employed to calculate and compare the weight set in a petrochemical enterprise, respectively.
The comparisons between the global weight values from the FAHP and AHP calculations are performed in Figure 2. The results show that traditional AHP method not only produces great differences in weight distribution, but also has a strong subjective influence on experts’ preferences. However, the calculation results of FAHP show that this method is less affected by the subjective preferences of experts. The weight value of FAHP is more scientific and reasonable than AHP.
2. The weaknesses of applied approach
In section 7, the limitations of the method and its future prospects are discussed in detail, such as there is a lack of a standardized database system to analyze and assess the obtained behavior data and so on.
Comment 3: There is no discussion section in this paper. It is necessary.
Response 3:
I added a discussion and analysis of the results, it includes section 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3. In Section 5.1, Figure 2 comparisons between the global weight values from the FAHP and AHP calculations are performed and the global weights were analyzed based on FAHP. Weight ranking can also help leaders and managers with their safety strategy, reducing potential risk factors by implementing the BBS approach. Based on the weight analysis, it is clear that the main overlooked factors (U4) and sub-factors (especially U24, U25, and U23) are potential risk factors.
In Section 5.2 has been added to the discussion section (Comparing the data of the oil industry and human assessment), it includes the annual accident and occupational injury statistics report in the RMP database (see 5.2.1 and 5.2.2).
Table 5 shows the total number of United States petrochemical accident and occupational injury from the RMP databases from 1994 to 2009. Figure 3 shows the different causes leading to oil accidents in the RMP database. In the United States, the major cause of accidents in the oil industry is equipment failure, followed by human error. Equipment failure, to some degree, this is inevitable. However, human error is completely avoidable in China. Therefore, the objective data compares with human subjective assessment, about 37% of the human factor is analyzed in detail and ranked to find the most important factors. So as to reduce the accidents and occupational injuries caused by human error.
In Section 5.3, two evaluation results were compared in Figure 5, it shows that the safety performance of the second FCE is superior to that of the first assessment. Safety performance postintervention levels were better than for the first FCE results. As a matter of fact, the numbers of occupational injuries and days away decreased.
Comment 4: Conclusions also need to be rewritten then the section on discussion of results is added.
Response 4:
I rewritten the conclusion of my manuscript and deleted some meaningless parts to shorten the text and make it more concise. I also added discussion of results related to the oil industry to make them more professional, such as in China, human factors are more common than equipment failure in oil industry accidents, but often lead to more serious consequences. However, in the United States, the major factor in safety incidents is equipment failure, the human factor is about 37 percent. Therefore, according to the actual situation of Chinese enterprises, managers strengthen safety communication and implement BBS management to improve safety performance for the enterprise. We can conclude that most oil accidents can be prevented by bottom-up safety communication.
At the same time, I listed and numbered the most important relevant conclusions. Finally, in order to make the conclusion more concise, I list the limitations separately.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper has been significantly improved especially introduction section. The authors have addressed all issued raised by reviewers. The paper can be printed in current form.
