With this book, it is our intention to fill the existing gap between the academic literature on operational safety economics within organizations, on the one hand, and the industrial situation and needs regarding the topic, on the other. The gap is wide and the bridge is difficult to construct due to the complexity and broadness of the topic and the variety of different viewpoints, perceptions and stakeholders.

The economic concepts, models and theories are explained in this book as simply as possible, but – of course – no simpler than necessary. Nevertheless, it was often a challenge to strip down the existing academic insights into clearly understandable and user-friendly practical know-how. We have provided straightforward theoretical examples and exercises and illustrated with industrial usable and credible examples wherever possible.

The book is written from the perspective of microeconomics, i.e., the single company wishing to bring more economic-related knowledge into the company's decision-making process with respect to safety. The objective is to improve decision-making based on economic approaches, models and information. Risks are considered relative, and decisions need to be made to decrease risks or certain aspects of risks, relative to other risks, or aspects of risks. Hence, this book is intended to guide the user into how risk decision-making can be improved from a single organization's viewpoint. Even if a company's safety figures are already very good, there is very often leeway for further improvement, i.e., more efficiency with the same effectiveness, or vice versa. In brief, excellence needs to be strived for. To achieve this, adequate company-specific economic considerations are required.

This book is thus not intended as a macroeconomic work. Topics such as wage differentials, inter-country or inter-company macroeconomic aspects of risks, societal cost–benefit analyses, psychometric studies of risks and so on are not discussed. The book follows the observation that in this age of technology, communication and need for respect among people, new products are being ever more cleverly engineered to accomplish incredible feats of precision and economy, but the methods and approaches used to produce them often remain stuck in an old-school, mechanistic age of production. However, the safety needs of employees, like those of customers, also require innovation and adaptation to the twenty-first century. An important way to further improve safety within many organizations is for safety managers to use economic analyses more effectively. Economic analyses, if carried out correctly, almost always show that safety investments are a no-brainer (i.e., they should be carried out), and that investing in prevention and avoiding accident costs actually is a business strategy leading to long-term profitability and to sustainable and intrinsically healthy organizations.

In summary, the purpose of Operational Safety Economics: A Practical Approach Focused on the Chemical and Process Industries is to investigate the complexity of operational risk with respect to economic issues and considerations from a single organization perspective, to provide dimensions and definitions that encompass and describe topics in operational safety economic topics. A variety of theories and methods for dealing with economic analyses in an organizational environment are thus addressed. To accomplish this purpose, previous work in the field is revisited, studied and discussed, and new ideas and innovative theories are conceptualized and debated. In the end, the objective is to clarify the economics surrounding operational safety and, where possible, to provide techniques useful for addressing operational safety decision-making while considering economic issues. There are no final answers, only some clues and paths to follow to where and how such answers might be obtained by a company's safety manager.

We wish the reader of this book an interesting read, as well as economic innovative thinking with respect to operational safety.

Prof. Dr. Ir. Genserik L.L. Reniers
Drs. H.R. Noël Van Erp