<scp>AIChE</scp> 's Center for Chemical Process Safety: Forty years driving process safety globally

Abstract On the night of December 2–3, 1984, water contamination of a tank of methyl isocyanate in Bhopal, India initiated a series of events that led to a catastrophic toxic release, killing more than 20,000 residents and injuring more than 200,000. Immediately after, leaders from the chemical industry asked AIChE to lead a collaborative effort to eliminate catastrophic process incidents by advancing the state‐of‐the‐art in technology and management practices, serving as the premier resource for information on process safety, supporting process safety in engineering, and promoting process safety as a key industry value. In the spring of 1985, CCPS was founded. Since that time, CCPS has incorporated experience‐based learning from major and minor accidents and near‐misses into a world‐class collection of guideline documents, resource books, and online content. This paper will reflect on 40 years of CCPS's accomplishments.