AbstractThis paper outlines the concepts for a systematic approach to the safety analysis of chemical processing systems. A procedure for automatically generating fault trees is presented. The fault trees describe nearly all the failure modes for the system under analysis. The fault tree generation procedure uses information on (1) the description of the system (detailed flowsheet), (2) physical and chemical properties of materials in and around the system, and (3) unit models which describe the behavior of the units within the system and which are assembled to describe the behavior of the complete system. The unit models are connected to form an information flow structure for the complete processing system. Unit failure models are also defined for common chemical units. By systematically defining hazard states and searching the information flow structure for the system, it is possible to generate fault trees for the complete process. An analysis of the fault trees can reveal the important failure modes for the process.