The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission developed the Hydrogen Incidents and Accidents Database HIAD in the frame of the European Network of Excellence HySafe (2003-2006).
HIAD is intended for public use. It is a repository of hydrogen-related unwanted events. Almost all data in HIAD come from a publicly available primary or secondary source (news, inspection reports from public institutions, other public databases, scientific articles, etc.). As far as possible, HIAD maintains a traceable link to the original sources.
For enquiries or requests, send a message to: JRC-PTT-H2SAFETY@ec.europa.eu
A short history of HIAD
At the end of the European project HySafe, JRC has maintained and populated HIAD with the support of the International Association HySafe. HIAD was originally accessible via a web-interface, which enabled online consultation, but had limited data download functions.
In 2017, the JRC executed a major upgrade producing HIAD 2.0 with the financial support of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking (FCH2 JU). Shortly later, HIAD became part of the activities of the European Hydrogen Safety Panel (EHSP) of the FCH 2 JU.
In December 2020, HIAD was taken offline due to new security measures and therefore users could not access anymore directly the data and perform their own search. As an alternative to the online access, JRC developed a system, which exported the online data into an offline Excel file, allowing users to access and analyse the complete set of data according to their needs. That file has been requested by and distributed to hundredths of experts.
Since 2022, HIAD Excel file is downloadable from the online platform of the European Major Accident Hazards Bureau. This platform, managed by JRC, hosts the European database eMARS, HIAD and other safety related tools.
In 2023, JRC deployed a new structural upgrade as HIAD 2.1, aiming at a better retrieval of critical information and at reducing data noise.
The most recent version is now JRC HIAD 2.2 export 2026 01 01 for users (the number 2.2 indicates the upgrade version, the date indicates the end date of the events update).
Quality of data
HIAD events are analysed, interpreted, reviewed and validated by JRC experts before entering the database. However, the overall quality of the descriptions depends to a major degree on the quality and the level of details provided by their sources. Moreover, before 2017, the review and validation processes were performed by more than one institution, under a different approach. This resulted in incoherences in the events assessment. Despite JRC reviewing efforts, some incoherences are still present in the set of data, especially for those with low quality. To guide the users and allow a down-selection based on event descriptors quality, JRC developed a quality label for each event. The quality label scale is ranging from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest quality label. Events with quality label from 2 to 5 are shared with users. Events not validated receive quality label 1 and are not made public. They are waiting for possible improvements based on new information becoming available or eventual cancellation.
Whenever possible, HIAD contains a lesson learned and a cause analysis. In many of the cases with quality labels 2 and 3, however, the low quality of the event descriptors does not allow for a meaningful lesson learned.
How to use HIAD data
HIAD data collection is a service provided by JRC to safety experts, educators, students and technologists active in the field of hydrogen. Please consider that the events described in HIAD are not intended to serve as an instrument for passing judgement on individual companies or countries associated with an accident. A blame culture surrounding the database would greatly reduce the sharing of information. Hence, the HIAD Excel file provides only literature references, it does not provide the first or secondary data sources documents, which remain managed solely by JRC. JRC will provide these on an ad-hoc basis, following a request for specific research purposes and only on a sub-set of the total dataset.
A proper use of the data in HIAD should also consider the following caveats:
- Do not conclude from the data in HIAD that ‘hydrogen is not safe’. Every technology, once deployed, will always be affected by unplanned, unwanted events. HIAD is a tool developed to assist safe improvements of hydrogen technologies.
- HIAD events descriptors have been designed to draw a lesson learned and improve the safety of hydrogen technologies, not to compare the safety of hydrogen technologies with the safety of other technologies. Do not use HIAD data to answer the ill-posed question: ‘which technology is safer?’
- The present structure of HIAD data is not done for deriving quantitative failure probabilities of specific components, because most of the event descriptions do not provide the details required and the statistical reliability enabling this type of analysis.
- Be very cautious before drawing general conclusions, because they could be biased by the types and availability of the primary sources used. For example, the historical and geographical distributions of the accidents are predominantly reporting European and North American events. Moreover, certain industrial sectors are more represented than others, because they are committed to investigate and publicly report their accidents, while others are not.
For questions, updates, feedback and collaboration proposal, please write to JRC-PTT-H2SAFETY@ec.europa.eu
