Illustrative: potential-flow streamlines around a body with tracer bands moving at the local speed and a wake that sways downstream

Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium · Course catalogue · Hazards, Disasters and Resilience

Hazard Science

Technological, industrial and Natech hazards

Technological, industrial and Natech hazards, taught twice over: as the working methods of the field and as its frontier since 2024, with labs on the Academy's tools, open data and the Nexus Standards.

Core course Frontier course

The discipline

01Core course · L2 Intermediate

Technological, industrial and Natech hazards: foundations and practice

This area covers industrial and chemical accidents, nuclear and radiological hazards, dam and structural failure and transport accidents, including Natech events in which a natural hazard triggers a technological accident.

Level
L2 Intermediate
Study time
about 24 hours (planning estimate)
Status
In authoring
Prerequisites
An L1 course in the area, or an entry review

Why now

It is a clear case study on facility siting, legacy equipment and normalised informal procedures, all recurring contributors to major accident hazards. U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, U.S. Chemical Safety Board Issues Final Report on August 2025 Fatal Coke Oven Gas Explosion at U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works, 10 August 2026

Learning outcomes

  1. Define natech event and the other key terms of the discipline and use them correctly in a written case
  2. Explain industrial and chemical accidents and major accident hazard regulation with a worked example and its source
  3. Apply the discipline's method to a documented case and explain each result with its source
  4. Analyse a named case against process safety, stating evidence, date and limits

Modules

  1. Industrial and chemical accidents
    • Industrial and chemical accidents
    • Major accident hazard regulation
    • Process safety
  2. Nuclear and radiological risk
    • Nuclear and radiological risk
    • Dam and structural failure
    • Transport accidents and dangerous goods
  3. Natech events
    • Natech events
    • Land-use planning around hazardous sites
  4. Lab: the discipline's method
    • A loss-of-containment frequency and a consequence model give the chance of death at each distance from an installation; the individual risk contour where that chance meets a national criterion fixes the planning zone, and the population inside the hazard range gives the expected fatalities per event.
    • Work the method through a documented case and explain each result
    • Read the method's sources and stated values

Labs with Academy tools

Nexus Standards

Teaches

  • NRS-X10 Chemical, industrial, nuclear and radiological safety
  • NRS-X11 Transport safety and resilience
  • NRS-H32 Hazard family: Hazardous releases and chemical agents
  • NRS-H33 Hazard family: Ionising radiation and nuclear material
  • NRS-H47 Hazard family: Structural and civil failure
  • NRS-H49 Hazard family: Transport accidents
  • NRS-H50 Hazard family: Industrial and process accidents
  • NRS-M18 Method fabric: Critical infrastructure and industrial risk

Relies on

  • NS-1 The UNI and the artefact catalogue
  • NS-16 UNI application profile (how articles, documents, code, data, APIs and interfaces carry the UNI)
  • NRS-C1 Risk vocabulary and ontology
  • NRS-C2 Risk assessment method
  • NRS-C3 Hazard, exposure, vulnerability and capacity data
  • NRS-C4 Risk data model, identifiers and exchange
  • NRS-C6 Systemic and cascading risk
  • NRS-C7 Early warning, triggers and anticipatory action

Assessment

  • 40%Lab recordWork the discipline's method through a documented case and explain each result with its source and date
  • 40%Case memoApply the discipline's methods to a named place or organisation, stating evidence and limits
  • 20%Key terms checkShort answers on the key terms, marked against the definitions

Delivery

  • Self-paced online, with the labs in the browser
  • Cohort study over six to eight weeks, with a weekly lab review
  • Co-delivered with a partner institution, inside its own courses

Partner on this course

  • Co-teach a module and bring a current case from your work
  • Host a cohort for your learners, with your own schedule and review
  • Contribute a lab: a dataset your institution publishes openly, or a model
  • Review the course content and its references before it opens
  • Translate the course and adapt its cases to your region

How institutions and experts take part

In the Academy LMS

Course on the learning platform
Intermediate, 4 topics
Cohort group
A community group for each cohort of learners
Achievement
Recorded on completion of the assessed work

References

  1. U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, U.S. Chemical Safety Board Issues Final Report on August 2025 Fatal Coke Oven Gas Explosion at U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works, 10 August 2026
  2. Kaplan and Garrick, On the quantitative definition of risk, 1981
  3. European Parliament and Council, Directive 2012/18/EU on the control of major-accident hazards involving dangerous substances (Seveso III), 2012
  4. Necci, Cozzani, Spadoni and Khan, Assessment of domino effect: state of the art and research needs, 2015
02Live map

Climate signals in Southern Africa

Surface heat, rain, snow, sea ice, marine heat and water storage, each a dated satellite or model product, over Southern Africa.

The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.

Layers 2

Climate signals

Latest available

NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth

Loading the latest NASA imagery.

Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.

Climate signals, framed on Southern Africa.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.

Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA EONETSources and licences

  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • GPM IMERG precipitation, NASA Precipitation Processing System; distributed by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • GHRSST Level 4 MUR analyses, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; distributed by the NASA Physical Oceanography DAAC (PO.DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • GRACE and GRACE-FO JPL mascon solution, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; distributed by the NASA Physical Oceanography DAAC (PO.DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
  • Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). ODbL
  • Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
  • Globe: MapLibre GL JS 6.9.1, BSD-3-Clause, © MapLibre contributors.
  • Live events: NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET); events are indicative and keep their original source links.
  • Live: NASA EONET Events are indicative, not authority warnings.
  • NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
  • Air quality forecast, 5 days, PM2.5 (CAMS via Open-Meteo): Contains modified Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service information 2026.
  • Past year, daily temperature (ERA5 via Open-Meteo): Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
  • Past year, daily temperature and sunshine (NASA POWER): These data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) POWER Project funded through the NASA Earth Science/Applied Science Program..
  • Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
  • Optional layers (21 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.

Layers and dates

  • Land surface temperature, day, 8-day composite: VIIRS NOAA-20 Level 3, 8-day, NASA LANCE · 14 Sep 2026
  • Precipitation rate, daily mean: GPM IMERG, NASA GES DISC · 12 Oct 2026
  • Snow cover: VIIRS NOAA-20 NDSI, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
  • Sea ice concentration: GHRSST MUR, NASA JPL PO.DAAC · 12 Oct 2026
  • Sea surface temperature anomaly: GHRSST MUR25, NASA JPL PO.DAAC · 12 Oct 2026
  • Water storage anomaly, monthly: GRACE-FO JPL mascons, NASA JPL PO.DAAC · July 2022

03How learning runs

How learning runs, as a process you can run

Select a scenario and press Play: course, pathway, practice, faculty, cells and record.

04What is changing

Frontier course · L3 advanced, programme courses and standards

Technological, industrial and Natech hazards: frontier methods

The methods, data, tools and studies that changed technological, industrial and Natech hazards between 2024 and 2026, taught by reproducing them on open data.

Level
L3 Advanced
Study time
about 28 hours (planning estimate)
Status
Planned
Prerequisites
Technological, industrial and Natech hazards: foundations and practice; Working knowledge of a scripting language (Python or R) for the labs

Why now

It is a clear case study on facility siting, legacy equipment and normalised informal procedures, all recurring contributors to major accident hazards. U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, U.S. Chemical Safety Board Issues Final Report on August 2025 Fatal Coke Oven Gas Explosion at U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works, 10 August 2026

Learning outcomes

  1. Explain what changed in technological, industrial and Natech hazards since 2024 and cite the studies, data or rules behind each change
  2. Reproduce CSB finds ad hoc procedure behind fatal Clairton coke oven explosion on open data and state the uncertainty of the result
  3. Evaluate a 2024 to 2026 study: its question, data, method, limits and what it changes for practice
  4. Design an analysis that combines a frontier method with the faculty's instruments, and justify each choice

Modules

  1. CSB finds ad hoc procedure behind fatal Clairton coke oven explosion
    • The Chemical Safety Board's final report on the August 2025 explosion at U.S.
    • It is a clear case study on facility siting, legacy equipment and normalised informal procedures, all recurring contributors to major accident hazards.
    • U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, 10 August 2026
  2. EPA proposes rolling back parts of chemical accident prevention rule
    • The US Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule to rescind or modify provisions of the 2024 Risk Management Program rule, citing duplicative requirements and burden; comments closed on 11 May 2026.
    • Changes to major accident regulation alter what facilities must assess and disclose, so operators and communities need to track the final rule.
    • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 24 February 2026
  3. Reproduction lab
    • Extend the discipline's method with one frontier method and compare its results
    • State the uncertainty and the limits of the result
    • Peer review against a shared checklist
  4. Technology that helps and the risks it carries
    • Drones, Earth observation, machine learning forecasting and cell broadcast warnings.
    • Telecom and positioning failure, and AI-generated misinformation in a crisis.

Labs with Academy tools

Nexus Standards

Teaches

  • NRS-X10 Chemical, industrial, nuclear and radiological safety
  • NRS-X11 Transport safety and resilience
  • NRS-H32 Hazard family: Hazardous releases and chemical agents
  • NRS-H33 Hazard family: Ionising radiation and nuclear material
  • NRS-H47 Hazard family: Structural and civil failure
  • NRS-H49 Hazard family: Transport accidents
  • NRS-H50 Hazard family: Industrial and process accidents
  • NRS-M18 Method fabric: Critical infrastructure and industrial risk

Relies on

  • NS-1 The UNI and the artefact catalogue
  • NS-16 UNI application profile (how articles, documents, code, data, APIs and interfaces carry the UNI)
  • NRS-C1 Risk vocabulary and ontology
  • NRS-C2 Risk assessment method
  • NRS-C3 Hazard, exposure, vulnerability and capacity data
  • NRS-C4 Risk data model, identifiers and exchange
  • NRS-C6 Systemic and cascading risk
  • NRS-C7 Early warning, triggers and anticipatory action

Assessment

  • 50%Method reproductionReproduce one frontier method on open data and state the uncertainty of the result
  • 30%Study reviewA critical review of a 2024 to 2026 study: question, data, method, limits, what it changes
  • 20%Peer reviewReview two other learners' reproductions against a shared checklist

Delivery

  • Self-paced online, with the labs in the browser
  • Cohort study over six to eight weeks, with a weekly lab review
  • Co-delivered with a partner institution, inside its own courses

Partner on this course

  • Co-teach a module and bring a current case from your work
  • Host a cohort for your learners, with your own schedule and review
  • Contribute a lab: a dataset your institution publishes openly, or a model
  • Review the course content and its references before it opens
  • Translate the course and adapt its cases to your region

How institutions and experts take part

In the Academy LMS

Course on the learning platform
Expert, 4 topics
Cohort group
A community group for each cohort of learners
Achievement
Recorded on completion of the assessed work

References

  1. U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, U.S. Chemical Safety Board Issues Final Report on August 2025 Fatal Coke Oven Gas Explosion at U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works, 10 August 2026
  2. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention Proposed Rule, 24 February 2026
  3. Kaplan and Garrick, On the quantitative definition of risk, 1981
  4. European Parliament and Council, Directive 2012/18/EU on the control of major-accident hazards involving dangerous substances (Seveso III), 2012
  5. Necci, Cozzani, Spadoni and Khan, Assessment of domino effect: state of the art and research needs, 2015
05Take part

Take part in the work

Start from who you are.

06Questions

Questions, answers and key terms

Is the course free?
Yes. Every course and learning material of Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium, is free to study, self-paced or with a cohort. Ordinary participation has no fee; paid work, internships and fellowships are separate arrangements.
What does completing a course give me?
A completion record: the course, its version, the date and what was assessed, private by default and shared by you. It stacks into discipline, department and programme achievements. A record states what was studied and assessed and does not certify competence; it is not a licence, a professional title or an employment status.
Where do the data and the places come from?
Every faculty teaches on a twin of a real place built from open data; each layer carries its provider, licence and date, and every result on the Academy states its source. Maps and figures are indicators for teaching, never an assessment of a place.
How do I take part beyond the course?
Form a competence cell of three to seven people, study a shared pathway, take a supervised assignment in the National Working Groups, or bring a cohort from your institution. For organisations.

Key terms

Term

Natech event

A technological accident triggered by a natural hazard, such as a chemical release during a flood.

Term

Major accident hazard

The potential for a release, fire or explosion at an installation that seriously harms people or the environment.

Term

Layer of protection analysis

A semi-quantitative method that tests whether independent safeguards reduce a scenario's risk enough.

Term

Bow-tie diagram

A diagram that links the causes of an event to its consequences through preventive and mitigating barriers.

ReportsContribute

Contribute evidence from this page.

Reports is the Consortium's quarterly publication. What you know about this subject can become evidence, a case or a correction in the next edition, credited to you and published under CC BY 4.0 where it is your own work.

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