The process of Risk Assessment involves identification and careful examination of the hazardous substances present in the workplace (industry, installations, or in process units); the work activities involving them; and how they might fail resulting in toxic releases, fire, explosion and similar events that could harm employees and the public.

Its purpose is to enable us to decide what we need to do to eliminate or reduce the safety risks from dangerous substances as far as is reasonably practicable. It should take account of such matters as:

  the hazardous properties of the substances;

  the way they are used or stored;

  the possibility of hazardous explosive atmospheres occurring;

  all potential ignition sources.

A Risk Assessment must be carried out in every organization regardless of the quantity of dangerous substance present, as it will enable industry people to decide whether existing measures are sufficient or whether any additional controls or precautions are necessary. As well as assessing the normal activities within the workplace, there is also need to assess non-routine activities, such as maintenance work, where there is often a higher potential for fire and explosion incidents to occur.

The first step in the risk assessment process is to identify workplace hazards. This step involves identifying the risk components in a workplace that have a potential to cause harm to people and environment. The desired outcome of the hazard identification is to list out all the hazards in the workplace.
The hazard identification typically provides specific information on situations that have the potential for causing injury to life or damage to the property and the environment due to a hazardous material spill or release. Hazards identification will include information about:

    Facility identification information specifying details of the subject emergency planning (MAH) facility. The information includes 
      the physical location of the industry; nearest crossroads and special directions to provide direction to responders to the
      location in case of emergency should it so arise.

    Hazard inventory identifying all the hazardous substances used or stored by the facility, regardless of whether the threshold
      level is ever present. For each product or chemical listed the storage location and method of storage (e.g., drums,
      underground storage tank) has to be indicated, as well as the anticipated average and maximum quantities during at a time.

    A hand drawn or computer generated facility diagram having details on property boundaries, entrances/exits, nearby streets,
     building entrances/exits, hydrants, identification of other water sources, chemical storage areas, secondary containment
     structures and other necessary information that can assume importance during and emergency.