Normal accidents. Living with high-risk technologies

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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Risk assessment and risk management: Review of recent advances on their foundation

https://hal-supelec.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00610053/document

Reliability engineering: Old problems and new challenges

Methods and models in process safety and risk management: Past, present and future

Perspectives on risk and the unforeseen

Monitoring of Human and Organizational Factors Influencing the Risk of Major Accidents

The barrier and operational risk analysis (BORA) project has developed a model for risk analysis based on the use of event trees, fault trees, influence diagrams, and risk influencing factors (RIFs). The model has been applied in some case studies in the project. The experience from these case studies has been used to develop a generalized methodology for analysis of operational barriers that are intended to prevent hydrocarbon leaks. A stepwise description of this generalized methodology is presented and discussed in the paper.

Generalized methodology for operational risk analysis of offshore installations

Decision making is a central component in the management of safety-critical operations. Some attempts have been made to employ Quantitative Risk Analysis as input to such decisions. Although adequate for long-term planning where the average risk is the relevant parameter, such systems tend to fall short in operational and instantaneous decisions where ‘average risk’ is of less relevance. In this paper we investigate how operational and instantaneous risk can be managed and supported. Our analysis is based on interviews and observation studies at a major plant processing hazardous fluids and gas. We suggest a typology for decisional situations at the plant, and relate these to well-known traditions in the literature of decision-making theory. Strategic decisions in the plant fit well into the characteristics of rational choice theory, operational decisions are well described in terms of bounded rationality, and, finally, instantaneous decisions are typically taken as described by naturalistic decision making theory. We suggest several principles for improving decision support. While many decisions today are based on a high degree of probabilistic information, we see a need to deploy more factual information to make the risk picture more relevant for both operational and instantaneous decisions. In addition, the available probabilistic information is often inaccurate; improving the probabilistic information base, through more nuanced criticality factors for example, will also be an improvement. Finally, a basic premise for improvements in the decision process, is the need to be conscious regarding what should be considered strategic, operational and instantaneous decisions.

Decisions and decision support for major accident prevention in the process industries

In spite of large and increasing efforts to control major accident risk, a number of serious accidents over the last few years have shown that control still is not sufficient in some cases. Examples of such accidents within the chemical process and oil and gas industries are Flixborough Disaster, Bhopal Disaster, Piper Alpha Disaster, Phillips 66 Disaster, Sodegaura Refinery Disaster, DSM Chemical Plant Explosion, Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion and Texas City Refinery Explosion. Investigations of the accidents have uncovered a variety of causes and in recent years focus have tended to switch more and more towards organizational and management issues. However, in this paper, we want to focus on how maintenance has influenced some of these major accidents. Safety barriers are installed to control the risk but this may fail due to barrier vulnerability and/or deficiencies imposed by maintenance itself or due to postponement of maintenance. Maintenance activities in themselves may also trigger events which may develop into major accidents. Maintenance may therefore influence accidents in many ways. The main objective of the paper is to discuss how maintenance has influenced some major accidents in the oil and gas and chemical process industry. The paper builds primarily on a thorough literature review, including review of earlier literature on this topic and review of investigation reports from a selection of accidents.

Stein Haugen

Papers

Perspectives on risk and the unforeseen

Monitoring of Human and Organizational Factors Influencing the Risk of Major Accidents

Generalized methodology for operational risk analysis of offshore installations

Decisions and decision support for major accident prevention in the process industries

The Influence of Maintenance on Some Selected Major Accidents