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H2Incidents: Hydrogen Incident Reporting and Lessons Learned

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Definitions

Incident
An incident is an event that results in:
  • a lost-time accident and/or injury to personnel
  • damage to project equipment, facilities or property
  • impact to the public or environment
  • an emergency response or should have resulted in an emergency response.
Near-Miss
A near-miss is an event that, under slightly different circumstances, could have become an incident. Examples include:
  • any unintentional hydrogen release that ignites, or is sufficient to sustain a flame if ignited, and does not fit the definition for an incident
  • any hydrogen release which accumulates above 25% of the lower flammability limits within an enclosed space and does not fit the definition of an incident
Non-Event
A non-event is a situation, occurrence, or other outcome relevant to safety that does not involve a particular incident or near miss. For example, a non-event might consist of a failed safety inspection.
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H2Incidents Help!

Navigation

The left navigation on the H2Incidents website is two-fold.

  1. Links
    By clicking on the links in the left navigation, you can view all incident reports matching that lone selection. For example, clicking on "Minor Injury" within the "Damages and Injuries" category will return a list of all incident reports that included "Minor Injury."
  2. Checkboxes
    Selecting checkboxes next to navigation items—then clicking the "Update Criteria" button—will provide a restrictive search on the criteria selected. Each selected checkbox will restrict the results to only incident reports that include that criteria. For example, selecting the checkbox next to "Minor Injury" in the "Damages and Injuries" category and selecting the checkbox next to "Decision Making" in the "Factors" category will return a list of all incident reports that included both "Minor Injury" and "Decision Making."
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About H2Incidents

H2Incidents is a database-driven website intended to facilitate the sharing of lessons learned and other relevant information gained from actual experiences using and working with hydrogen. The database also serves as a voluntary reporting tool for capturing records of events involving either hydrogen or hydrogen-related technologies.

The focus of the database is on characterization of hydrogen-related incidents and near-misses, and ensuing lessons learned from those events. All identifying information, including names of companies or organizations, locations, and the like, is removed to ensure confidentiality and to encourage the unconstrained future reporting of events as they occur.

The intended audience for this website is anyone who is involved in any aspect of hydrogen use. The existing safety event records are mainly focused on laboratory settings that offer valuable insights into the safe use of hydrogen in energy applications and R&D. It is hoped that users will come to this website both to learn valuable lessons from the experiences of others as well as to share information from their own experiences. Improved safety awareness benefits all.

Development of the database has been primarily supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. While every effort is made to verify the accuracy of information contained herein, no guarantee is expressed or implied with respect to the completeness, causal attribution, or suggested remedial measures for avoiding future events of a similar nature. The contents of this database are presented for informational purposes only. Design of any energy system should always be developed in close consultation with safety experts familiar with the particulars of the specific application.

We encourage you to browse through the safety event records on the website and send us your comments and suggestions. We will continue to add new records as they become available.