This paper focuses on reviewing past progress in the advancement of definitions, methods, and models for safety analysis and assessment of process industrial systems and highlighting the main research topics. Based on the analysis of the knowledge with respect to process safety, the review covers the fact that the entire system does not have the ability to produce casualties, health deterioration, and other accidents, which ultimately cause human life threats and health damage. And, according to the comparison between safety and reliability, when a system is in an unreliable state, it must be in an unsafe state. Related works show that the main organizations and regulations are developed and grouped together, and these are also outlined in the literature. The progress and current research topics of the methods and models have been summarized and discussed in the analysis and assessment of safety for process industrial systems, which mainly illustrate that the dynamic operational safety assessment under the big data challenges will become the research direction, which will change the future study situation.