title: Harnessing data mining to explore incident databases.
abstract: Large numbers of incident related databases have been established in the last three decades. The majority of attempts to explore these data marts were trials to identify patterns via first glance into the datasets. This study investigated a subset of incidents from fixed facilities in Harris County, TX, extracted from the National Response Center database. By classifying the information into groups and using data mining techniques, interesting patterns of incidents according to characteristics such as type of equipment involved, type of chemical released and causes involved were revealed and further these were used to modify the annual failure probabilities of equipments.
authors.affiliation: Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center, Chemical Engineering Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3122, USA.
authors.forename: Sumit
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Anand
authors.forename: Nir
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Keren
authors.forename: Marietta J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Tretter
authors.forename: Yanjun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: T Michael
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: O'Connor
authors.forename: M Sam
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Mannan
mesh_terms: D002617:Chemical Industry / Q000458:organization & administration*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D003663:Decision Trees; D015386:Hazardous Substances; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D017751:Safety Management
chemical_list: D015386:Hazardous Substances