Safety Education 4.0 - a Response to the Needs of Process Industry 4.0

Chemical engineering education has been constantly evolving since its establishment back in the late 19^th century. Novel and ground-breaking elements have been incorporated to nurture the engineers and scientists of the next generation. Among them, safety education has found a place in chemical engineering curriculum following industrial disasters, such as Flixborough (1974), Bhopal (1984), and Deepwater Horizon (2010), that have deeply impacted communities and most importantly awakened people to recognize the importance of safety education. Yet the outcomes are not fully reflected in accidents prevention due to the gap between the engineering education and engineering practice. With the rapid development of digitalization alongside with Industry 4.0, “How to develop safety knowledge and competence among graduates that have positive impact on process design and operation under the current trend of digitalization?” becomes one of the key questions that needs addressing for the educators, industries, and government agencies.

In this work, we attempt to investigate the status of safety knowledge development from education and practice perspective. A thorough literature review and analysis is conducted related to safety knowledge development and safety education in chemical engineering curriculum. Efforts are also made to better understand demographics and temporal evaluation of safety education in specific engineering discipline. In addition, an extensive perspective is provided on how safety education would address the challenge of process system digitalization, an element of Industry 4.0, with respect to the potential teaching contents and forms of delivery under the circumstances of digital transformation. The perspective is termed as Safety Education 4.0. Such perspective would build on the existing curriculum to bridge the gap for students to better adjust the technology advances in engineering practices.