A vision of facility siting possibilities

Facility siting methods to optimize the layout of industrial facilities for risk reduction have been evolving for decades from subjective views, standards, and guidelines to quantitative numerical analysis. The authors of this paper have tossed out the past, moved beyond the present, and taken out their crystal balls to provide a discussion around the future of facility siting by focusing on technology driven enhancements associated with three main themes: mainstreaming of current advanced analysis techniques into the base case methodology, incorporating company and/or site specific data trending and analytics to operationalize the studies, and the potential transformational change to machine learning‐based predictive risk management. With technological advancements touching nearly every area of business, it is no surprise that it is also changing the landscape of consequence and risk‐based facility siting approaches. As with all markets, the customer will be a key driver for the advancements of technical safety studies to suit their adapting needs. However, as this article will show, personnel conducting facility siting studies are also using technological advancements to challenge the status quo by improving data fidelity, increasing the robustness and depth of analysis, and providing improved insights to aid decision making.