Abstract
Gas has replaced coal or petroleum as primary fuel because of its convenience. However, gas has risk of fire, explosion, or poisoning. To reduce gas-related accidents, many strategic projects have been being carried based on 'Gas Safety Management Basic Plans' on a domestic scale. In spite of those projects, the gas-related accident rate did not decrease over past decades. Thus, this study was conducted to analyze the effectiveness of ongoing projects, and to find out ways to make improvements. Conventional statistical analyses on accident data published by gas-related institutions were not useful to determine meaningful attributes to predict future. Whereas, accident case analyses adopted in the present study discovered differences in the type of people and their unsafe acts for each gas type. Meanwhile, the overall average priority of projects was not high in the aspect of System Safety Precedence. If the current trend is maintained, with sigmoid functions, it can be estimated that mean annual accident rate will decrease by only 2.0% in the next two decades. To improve the current trend, the present study made conclusions as followings: (1) safety projects should be designed with careful consideration of accident traits including gas type, unsafe acts, and persons involved and (2) alternative strategies should include system considerations such as minimum hazard design and safety devices prior to mere education or training. To summarize briefly, the present state related with gas accidents highlights the necessity of a system-based multidisciplinary approach.