ABSTRACT Climate‐related hazards such as severe floods, storms, and heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense, raising significant concern for those responsible for ensuring safety industrial operations. When these events trigger technological failures often referred to as NATECH (Natural Hazard Triggered Technological) incidents, the consequences can be severe, especially in sectors like chemical manufacturing, oil refining, and energy infrastructure. However, climate risks are still not consistently acknowledged or addressed in many safety investigations and frameworks. Research was conducted using PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta‐Analyses) and bowtie‐based meta‐analysis to explore how climate hazards are represented in official reports and whether recurring barrier failures and system weaknesses are being recognized or overlooked. Fifty industrial incidents that were associated with climate‐related events were selected from a broader pool of 131 reports gathered from the US Chemical Safety Board, France's ARIA (Analysis, Research and Information on Accidents) database, and international media archives. Findings show that only 36% of the reports explicitly mentioned climate or extreme weather as contributing factors. Common failures involved containment breaches, electrical system damage, and inadequate flood or heat protection often in facilities that were not designed to withstand such events. Despite clear climate triggers, most recommendations focused only on conventional safety upgrades, with limited attention to future climate adaptation. This research highlights that there is a need to integrate climate scenarios into tools like HAZOP (Hazard and Operability Study), LOPA (Layer of Protection Analysis), and bowtie. It also contributes to the growing body of work calling for adaptive safety strategies that respond not only to internal risks but also to the external pressures of changing climate.
Shivappayyanamath et al. (Wed,) studied this question.