AN EXTENSION OF THE FAILURE MODE EFFECTS AND CRITICALITY ANALYSIS WITH FUZZY ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS METHOD TO ASSESS THE EMERGENCY SAFETY BARRIERS

The emergency safety barrier is one of the reactive technical safety barriers in industrial facilities. Degrade of emergency safety barriers can lead to a major accident with serious consequences for people, property and the environment. In this context, the purpose of this article is to present a proposed methodology to identify these deficiencies, thus ensuring the effectiveness of the emergency safety barriers. This paper presents an integrated approach that uses fuzzy set theory, extension of failure modes, effects and criticality analysis and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method to deal with uncertainty in decision-making related to the prioritization of risk factors. These risk factors are the prioritization of corrective actions associated with the most critical disturbance modes to improve the reliability of emergency safety barriers. In addition, a Liquefied Petroleum Gas production facility was selected as a case study to assess the emergency safety barriers. The results show that the proposed methodology provides the possibility to evaluate the fire-fighting systems. In addition, the fuzzy analytical approach method is the most reliable and accurate. Therefore, some corrective actions are suggested to reduce the failure criticality of the emergency safety barriers and help practitioners prioritize the improvement of the emergency safety barriers of the Liquefied Petroleum Gas storage facility. This paper has an important role in the dysfunctional analysis of the emergency safety barriers related to the others effects of the release of LPG, such as the effects of domino scenarios

A decision support system for demolition safety risk assessment

Demolition can be defined as dismantling, razing, destroying or wrecking of any building or structure or any part thereof. Demolition work involves many of the hazards associated with construction. However, demolition also involves additional hazards due to unknown factors which makes demolition work particularly dangerous. In order to make the demolition project safer, everyone at a demolition site must be fully aware of the hazards they may encounter and the safety precautions that they must take to protect themselves and their employees. Safety risk assessment is a planning tool that can be used to improve safety performance at demolition site. In the absence of a special tool for demolition safety risk assessment, a prototype Decision Support System (DSS) based on failure mode and effect analysis that enables decision makers to systematically and semi-quantitatively identify, analyze and evaluate safety risks factors in demolition project has been developed. The prototype is named Hybrid Demolition Safety Risk Assessor (HDSRA). It has three modules; (i) safety risk identification, (ii) safety risk analysis and (iii) safety risk evaluation. Module one aids the decision makers to identify thirty-seven safety risks that is developed by reviewing safety literatures and forming consensus among Delphi panel of experts. In addition, the module introduces seven immediate causes that trigger occurrence of those thirty-seven safety risks. The second module comprised a hybrid decision making model based on Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) that relatively estimates likelihood of thirty-seven safety risks with respect to seven immediate causes. The third module evaluates and prioritizes the safety risks by using two ranking methods; Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR). The HDSRA prototype is then developed by integrating module 1, 2 and 3 and evaluated by a group of demolition experts. HDSRA acts as information source that can be used by demolition contractors to identify safety risks in a systematic way. Therefore, possibility of raising error during risk identification process in the implementation of demolition work is reduced. Decision support system that is produced by the HDSRA prototype, proactively proposes action that should be taken by demolition safety experts to control risks at workplace. And finally, HDSRA can be also used as a training tool to raise safety awareness among demolition workers

A novel engineering framework for risk assessment of Mobile Offshore Drilling Units

Natural oil and gas has become one of mankind’s most fundamental resources. Hence, the performance of mobile offshore drilling units (MODUs) under various conditions has received considerable attention. MODUs are designed, constructed, operated, and managed for harsh geographical environments, thus they are unavoidably exposed to a wide range of uncertain threats and hazards. Ensuring the operational safety of an MODU’s system is often a complex problem. The system faces hazards from many different sources which dynamically threaten its integrity and can cause catastrophic consequences at time of failure. The main purpose of this thesis is to propose a methodology to improve the current procedures used in the risk assessment of MODUs. The aim is to prevent a critical event from occurring during drilling rather than on measures that mitigate the consequences once the undesirable event has occurred. A conceptual framework has been developed in this thesis to identify a range of hazards associated with normal operational activities and rank them in order to reduce the risks of the MODU. The proposed methodology provides a rational and systematic approach to an MODU’s risk assessment; a comprehensive model is suggested to take into consideration different influences of each hazard group (HG) of an offshore system. The Fuzzy- analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to determine the weights of each HG. Fault tree analysis (FTA) is used to identify basic causes and their logical relationships leading to the undesired events and to calculate the probability of occurrence of each undesirable event in an MODU system. The BBN technique is used to express the causal relationships between variables in order to predict and update the occurrence probability of each undesirable event when any new evidence becomes available. Finally, an integrated Fuzzy multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) model based on the Fuzzy-AHP and a Fuzzy techniques for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) is developed to offer decision support that can help the Decision maker to set priorities for controlling the risk and improving the MODU’s safety level. All the developed models have been tested and demonstrated with case studies. An MODU’s drilling failure due to its operational scenario has been investigated and focus has been on the mud circulation system including the blowout preventer (BOP)

Risk Assessment and Management of Petroleum Transportation Systems Operations

Petroleum Transportation Systems (PTSs) have a significant impact on the flow of crude oil within a Petroleum Supply Chain (PSC), due to the great demand on this natural product. Such systems are used for safe movement of crude and/or refined products from starting points (i.e. production sites or storage tanks), to their final destinations, via land or sea transportation. PTSs are vulnerable to several risks because they often operate in a dynamic environment. Due to this environment, many potential risks and uncertainties are involved. Not only having a direct effect on the product flow within PSC, PTSs accidents could also have severe consequences for the humans, businesses, and the environment. Therefore, safe operations of the key systems such as port, ship and pipeline, are vital for the success of PTSs. This research introduces an advanced approach to ensure safety of PTSs. This research proposes multiple network analysis, risk assessment, uncertainties treatment and decision making techniques for dealing with potential hazards and operational issues that are happening within the marine ports, ships, or pipeline transportation segments within one complete system. The main phases of the developed framework are formulated in six steps. In the first phase of the research, the hazards in PTSs operations that can lead to a crude oil spill are identified through conducting an extensive review of literature and experts’ knowledge. In the second phase, a Fuzzy Rule-Based Bayesian Reasoning (FRBBR) and Hugin software are applied in the new context of PTSs to assess and prioritise the local PTSs failures as one complete system. The third phase uses Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in order to determine the weight of PTSs local factors. In the fourth phase, network analysis approach is used to measure the importance of petroleum ports, ships and pipelines systems globally within Petroleum Transportation Networks (PTNs). This approach can help decision makers to measure and detect the critical nodes (ports and transportation routes) within PTNs. The fifth phase uses an Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach and Intelligence Decision System (IDS) software, to assess hazards influencing on PTSs as one complete system. This research developed an advance risk-based framework applied ER approach due to its ability to combine the local/internal and global/external risk analysis results of the PTSs. To complete the cycle of this study, the best mitigating strategies are introduced and evaluated by incorporating VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) and AHP to rank the risk control options. The novelty of this framework provides decision makers with realistic and flexible results to ensure efficient and safe operations for PTSs

Research in marine accidents: A bibliometric analysis, systematic review and future directions

In order to analyse the research evolution and knowledge frontier in the research of marine accidents, 491 literatures on marine accidents in the Web of Science database from 2000 to 2022 are taken as data sources. Integrated with literature analysis of traditional method, CiteSpace and VOSviewer are then jointly used for the development of the knowledge network map and cluster analysis, and the knowledge of network map, research hotpots, research evolution and knowledge frontiers is obtained. It is found that there is a close cooperative relationship among journals, researchers, research institutions and countries or regions. According to the subjects and methods, the study of marine accidents can be divided into two parts: the analysis of the influential factors and accident consequences, as well as the methodology development of traditional and emerging technology. In this context, the analysis of human factors in remote-controlled ships, the prevention of accidents in Arctic waters have become research hotspots, while emerging accident analysis methods such as machine learning and big data mining also have shown powerful insights in the analysis of marine accidents. In terms of innovation, the bibliometric approach enhances the ability to handle large literature databases and conduct network analysis. Moreover, this study visualises collaborative networks, analyses evolution trends, reveals the research hotpots, and conducts a comparison and discussion of mainstream approaches in marine accident research. As a result, this study provides a theoretical basis and implementation direction for the development of maritime safety

Framing the FRAM: A literature review on the functional resonance analysis method

The development of the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) has been motivated by the perceived limitations of fundamentally deterministic and probabilistic approaches to understand complex systems’ behaviour. Congruent with the principles of Resilience Engineering, over recent years the FRAM has been progressively developed in scientific terms, and increasingly adopted in industrial environments with reportedly successful results. Nevertheless, a wide literature review focused on the method is currently lacking. On these premises, this paper aims to summarise all available published research in English about FRAM. More than 1700 documents from multiple scientific repositories were reviewed through a protocol based on the PRISMA review technique. The paper aims to uncover a number of characteristics of the FRAM research, both in terms of the method's application and of the authors contributing to its development. The systematic analysis explores the method in terms of its methodological aspects, application domains, and enhancements in qualitative and quantitative terms, as well as proposing potential future research directions