Assessment and improvement of integrated HSE and macro-ergonomics factors by fuzzy cognitive maps: The case of a large gas refinery

This study analyzes and assesses the integrated health, safety, environment (HSE) and ergonomics (HSEE) factors by fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) approach. This is achieved through integrating ergonomic and macro-ergonomic as well as occupational health and safety arrangements in an integrated modeling for assessment of their multi-faceted impact on workers' productivity, injury rate and satisfaction. This paper uses FCM to assess the direct and indirect effects of HSEE factors on system performance indicators. The results of FCM are used to develop leading indicators useful for proactive management of productivity, injury rate, and job satisfaction. The result of a comprehensive survey of 37 experts in control rooms and maintenance activities in a large gas refinery is used to show the applicability and usefulness of FCM approach. Moreover, FCM results are used to determine the causal structure of HSEE factors and system performance indicators. It is concluded that macro-ergonomics factors such as instructions and education, familiarity with organization's rules, and proper communications most contribute to improve workers' safety, satisfaction, and productivity.     

Safety I–II,resilience and antifragility engineering: a debate explained through an accident occurring on a mobile elevating work platform

Occupational health and safety (OHS) represents an important field of exploration for the research community: in spite of the growth of technological innovations, the increasing complexity of systems involves critical issues in terms of degradation of the safety levels. In such a situation, new safety management approaches are now mandatory in order to face the safety implications of the current technological evolutions. Along these lines, performing risk-based analysis alone seems not to be enough anymore. The evaluation of robustness, antifragility and resilience of a socio-technical system is now indispensable in order to face unforeseen events. This article will briefly introduce the topics of Safety I and Safety II, resilience engineering and antifragility engineering, explaining correlations, overlapping aspects and synergies. Secondly, the article will discuss the applications of those paradigms to a real accident, highlighting how they can challenge, stimulate and inspire research for improving OHS conditions.     

The concept of resilience in OSH management: a review of approaches

The concept of resilience has become very popular, especially in the 21st century. This concept is applicable to many fields, from mechanics to a broad range of social sciences. Resilience has even become part of the national and global policies of the USA, the United Nations and the European Commission. The concept of resilience has also been implemented in the area of safety and health based on the criticism of the traditional approach to occupational safety and health, which does not result in a satisfactory level of occupational safety. The concept of resilience was adopted to research occupational safety and health in different fields and thus with different approaches, such as via socio-technical studies, the psychological and behavioral aspects of organizational resilience and the link with research on individual or family resilience and its influence on work.     

Performance evaluation of process industries resilience: Risk-based with a network approach

Risk management can be defined as coordinated activities to conduct and control an organization with consideration of risk. Recently, risk management strategies have been developed to change the approach to hazards and risks. Resilience as a safety management theory considers the technical and social aspects of systems simultaneously. Resilience in process industries, as a socio-technical system, has four aspects of early detection, error-tolerant design, flexibility, and recoverability. Meanwhile, process industries' resilience has three phases: avoidance, survival, and recovery, determining the transition between normal state, process upset event, and catastrophic event. There may be various technical and social failures such as regulatory and human or organizational items that can lead to upset or catastrophic events. In the avoidance phase, the upset event is predicted, and thus, the system remains in a normal state. For the survival phase, the system state is assumed to be an upset process event, and the system tries to survive through the unhealthy process conditions or remains in the same state, probably with low performance. In the recovery phase, the system is supposed to be catastrophic, and the emergency barriers are prioritized to show the severity of the consequences and response time, leading to a resumption of a normal state. Therefore, a resilience-based network can be designed for process industries to show its inherent dynamic transition in nature. In this study, network data envelopment analysis (DEA), as a mathematical model, is used to evaluate the relative efficiency of the process industries regarding a network transition approach based on the system's internal structure. First, a resilience-based network is designed to consist of three states of normal, upset, and catastrophic events. Then, the efficiency of each industrial department, which is defined as decision-making units (DMUs), is evaluated using network DEA. As a case study, a refinery that is considered a critical process industry is assessed. Using the proposed model shows the efficient and inefficient DMUs in each of three states of normal, upset, and catastrophic events of the process and the projection onto efficient frontiers. Besides calculating the network efficiency, the performance of each state is extracted to precisely differentiate between DMUs. The results of this study, which is one of the fewest cases in the area of performance evaluation of process industries with a network approach, indicated a robust viewpoint for monitoring and assessment of risks.     

The art of measuring nothing: The paradox of measuring safety in a changing civil aviation industry using traditional safety metrics

Measuring safety as an outcome variable within the ultra-safe civil aviation industry during periods of deliberate organizational change is a difficult, and often fruitless, task. Anticipating eroding safety processes, based on measuring nothing happening over time, does not adequately capture the true state of an evolving safe system, and this is particularly relevant for leaders and managers in a civil aviation industry responsible for maintaining and improving ultra-safe performance while simultaneously managing demanding strategic business goals.In this paper, I will look at the difficulties of measuring safety as an outcome measure in high reliability organizations (HROs) using the traditional measures of incident and accident reporting during periods of deliberate organizational change inspired by the results from a 3 year longitudinal case study of the Norwegian Air Navigation Services provider – Avinor. I will first review the current safety literature relating to safety management systems (SMSs) used in the civil aviation industry. I will then propose a more holistic model that shifts the focus from the traditional safety monitoring mechanisms of risk analysis and trial and error learning, to the natural interactivity within socio-technical systems as found in high reliability organizations. And finally, I will present a summary of the empirical results of an alternate methodology for measuring perceived changes in safety at the operational level as leading indicators of evolving safety at the organizational level.     

基于CW-VIKOR法的电梯运行状况安全评估

为对曳引式电梯的状态进行评估,在VIKOR法的基础上,通过对电梯故障类型进行数理统计,构建相关性较强的电梯运行状况评估体系;同时将简洁高效的BWM法和表示指标相关性的CRITIC法相结合,并引入距离函数优化分配系数的方式构建组合赋权法(CW),从而确定电梯安全指标权重,并将电梯指标各安全等级的临界值作为电梯安全等级的理想值作为VIKOR法中待评估电梯的比较对象的一部分。以利益比率Qi为电梯运行状况的评估值,确定电梯运行状况安全评估等级;最后,通过5组曳引式电梯的实例验证基于CW-VIKOR法的有效性和可行性,评估结果显示与电梯实际安全状况相一致。研究结果表明:该方法对电梯运行状况进行安全评估具有一定的可行性和参考价值。     

Modeling and optimizing efficiency gap between managers and operators in integrated resilient systems: The case of a petrochemical plant

The reliability issue in complex industrial systems such as oil, gas, petrochemical companies, nuclear and aviation industries has been of great importance. Resilience engineering (RE) is a new attitude toward the improvement of safety and reliability in the stated systems. One of the challenges a resilient system might face is the gap between work as imagined by managers and work as actually done by operators. This study will introduce a new framework named integrated resilience engineering (IRE) as a result of developing the concept of RE. The data used in this research have been obtained by means of questionnaire from a petrochemical company. Thereafter, the efficiency of operators and managers are calculated in RE and IRE frameworks through data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Then, the gaps between managers and operators are analyzed in two frameworks. The results are indicative of a significant growth in the number of efficient operators and managers in IRE framework compared to RE framework. Besides, the efficiency mean of managers and operators in IRE framework has experienced the growth of 1.8% and 5% compared to RE framework, respectively. The efficiency gap between managers and operators in IRE framework has also enjoyed the improvement of 88% compared to RE framework. Generally, it can be said that the suggested items of this research has led to the betterment of managers and operators’ efficiency and of the efficiency gap between them. Therefore, these items can improve the resilience and safety of complex systems. The results of Spearman test show that there is a strong direct correlation between the DEA results in two frameworks. This is the first study that examines the efficiency gap between operators and managers based on the RE principles and by means of DEA approach.     

复杂社会技术系统安全控制人因研究的转变趋向

在分析复杂社会技术系统的特征及其事故机制的基础上,总结出目前安全控制的人因研究领域中的4种新趋向:分别是从关注个体因素到关注组织因素;从强调行政控制到呼吁社会控制;从考察近端因子到探讨远端征兆;从考核导向向优化发展导向。四大趋势的转变为系统的安全控制提供了新的视角,也开辟了安全控制研究新的领域。最后,笔者结合4方面的转变,针对我国实际情况提出了相应的企业安全管理建议。     

Performance evaluation of integrated resilience engineering factors by data envelopment analysis: The case of a petrochemical plant

Petrochemical units are potentially prone to incidents that have catastrophic consequences such as explosion, leakage of toxic materials, and the stoppage of the production process. Resilience engineering (RE) is a new method that can control incidents and limit their consequences. It includes top-level commitment, reporting culture, learning, awareness, preparedness, and flexibility. However, this study introduces a new concept of RE (referred to as integrated RE or IRE) which includes the above factors in addition to self-organization, teamwork, redundancy and fault-tolerant. This study evaluates performance of IRE in a petrochemical plant through considering the obtained data from questionnaires and data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Moreover, the performance of RE and the new IRE are compared and discussed. The results show that although there is a strong direct correlation between the DEA results in two frameworks, the mean scores of efficiency in IRE is slightly higher than RE. This is the first study that introduces an integrated approach for RE. In addition, this study is amongst the first ones that examine the behavior of resilience engineering by DEA. Moreover, the superiority of IRE is shown through robust statistical analysis.     

Resilience-based approach to safety barrier performance assessment in process facilities

The performance assessment of safety barriers is essential to find vulnerable elements in a safety barrier system. Traditional performance assessment approaches mainly focus on using several static indicators for quantifying the performance of safety barriers. However, with the increasing complexity of the system, emerging hazards are highly uncertain, making it challenging for the static indicators to assess the performance of safety barriers. This paper proposes a resilience−based performance assessment method for safety barriers to overcome this problem. Safety barriers are classified according to their functions first. The dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) is then introduced to calculate the availability function under normal and disruption conditions. The ratio of the system's availability, when affected by the disruption, to the initial availability, is used to determine the absorption capacity of the system. The ratio of the quantity of availability recovery to the total quantity of system represents the adaptation and restoration capacity of the system. The system's resilience is represented by the sum of absorption, adaptation, and restoration capacities. The wax oil hydrogenation process is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology.     

Fuzzy risk modeling of process operations in the oil and gas refineries

Operating several assets has resulted in more complexity and so occurrence of some major accidents in the refining industries. The process operations risk factors including failure frequency and the consequence components like employees' safety and environment impacts, operation downtime, direct and indirect cost of operations and maintenance, and mean time to repair should be considered in the analysis of these major accidents in any refinery. Considering all of these factors, the risk based maintenance (RBM) as a proper risk assessment methodology minimizes the risk resulting from asset failures. But, one of the main engineering problems in risk modeling of the complex industries like refineries is uncertainty due to the lack of information. This paper proposes a model for the risk of the process operations in the oil and gas refineries. The fuzzy logic system (FLS) was proposed for risk modeling. The merit of using fuzzy model is to overcome the uncertainty of the RBM components. This approach also can be accounted as a benchmark for future failures. A unified risk number would be obtained to show how the criticality of units is. The case study of a gas plant in an oil refinery is performed to illustrate the application of the proposed model and a comparison between the results of both traditional RBM and fuzzy method is made.For the case study, 26 asset failures were identified. The fuzzy risk results show that 3 failures have semi-critical level and other 23 failures are non-critical. In both traditional and fuzzy RBM methods, some condenser failures had the highest risk number and some pumps were prioritized to have the lowest risk level. The unit with unified risk number less than 40 is in the non-critical conditions. Proposed methodology is also applicable to other industries dealing with process operations risks.     

Applications of resilience engineering principles in different fields with a focus on industrial systems: A literature review

This paper reviews literature that addresses applications of resilience engineering principles to various fields. Recently the concept has attracted great attention from a technical and industrial perspective. The primary focus of this paper is to review the resilience engineering applications to industrial systems with the purpose of applying them to the chemical industry. A systematic review is performed to classify peer-reviewed journal papers that are associated with resilience engineering applications into three categories: industrial systems, ecological systems, and interlinked systems. The literature in the category of industrial systems is further divided based on the type of approaches such as field studies, case studies, methodologies, and mathematical modeling. After thoroughly analyzing the literature, four key research areas are identified: Considering socio-technical factors for resilience assessment efficiently; Inculcating the possibility of multiple disasters in resilience assessment; Design optimization for resilience enhancement; Efficient restoration strategies. All these research areas have not been explored exclusively for chemical facilities to a great extent. It is concluded that if these research areas are addressed appropriately, it would help in triggering the research pertaining to the application of resilience engineering principles in chemical facilities.     

Development of a scale for assessing the organization's safety performance based fuzzy ANP

Traditionally, safety performance is assessed through statistical analyses of incident data, known as lagging indicators. Lagging indicators are not useful since the goal of founding safety management systems is the continuous improvement. In this study, a scale was established and validated to assess the elements that affect the organization safety. The fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) procedure was applied to weigh the elements and to reveal the influence of various structures for the proposed scales on the safety performance indicator. A 120-item scale was developed following the interview process to examine the factors that affect safety performance. Based on the face validity results, eight items were removed. The mean value of the instrument's validity index was 0.79. According to the FANP results, the organizational factor had the highest weight load of 0.465, whereas the environmental factor, with a weight of 0.209, had the least effect on the organization's safety performance index. An analysis of the study data showed that the designed scale can be used as an objective and simple tool to evaluate the factors that affect safety performance.     

三度空间视角下的装配式建筑施工安全绩效评价*

为了解决现有的装配式建筑施工安全绩效评价已不能满足建筑业信息化背景下发展需求的问题,基于“三度空间”视角,从物理、社会、信息3个层面,构建包含6个一级指标以及23个二级指标的装配式建筑施工安全绩效评价体系;阐述各指标之间的相互关联;采用ANP网络模型对各指标赋权;利用灰色聚类法对施工安全绩效指标进行评价。研究结果表明:该评价模型能够分析装配式建筑在社会、物理和信息3个空间维度的安全绩效,得出装配式建筑项目的整体安全绩效水平并识别出关键控制指标,可为装配式建筑安全绩效评价提供新的思路。     

A Dynamic Bayesian Network-based approach to Resilience Assessment of Engineered Systems

Traditional risk assessment approaches mainly focus on the pre-failure scenarios with certain information. For complex systems, the scope of risk assessment needs to be extended to include the post-failure phase; because the emerging hazards of these systems cannot be wholly identified and are usually highly uncertain. Thus, resilience assessment needs to be investigated. Most of the existing literature quantify resilience based on a system's performance loss caused by disruptions. These studies fail to assess the probability of a system to sustain or restore to a normal operational state after disruptions occur, how this probability changes with time, and how fast the system can be restored. The dynamic and probabilistic characteristics of resilience must be considered in systemic resilience assessment, in which the engineered system, human and organizational factors, and external disruptions are considered. This paper aims to develop a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN)-based approach to the probabilistic assessment of the system resilience by incorporating temporal processes of adaption and recovery into the analysis of system functionality. The proposed method also provides a new way to define resilience in terms of the probability of system functionality change during and after a disruption. A case study on the Chevron refinery accident is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology.     

高速公路交通安全的模糊区间评价

针对高速公路交通安全问题,利用模糊数学中的区间理论进行了研究。在对影响高速公路安全因素综合分析基础上,建立高速公路交通安全评价的指标体系。利用[0,1]区间理论,在评价指标定量化的基础上,依据模糊数学评判原理,在定义模糊区间运算的情况下,建立高速公路交通安全的区间评价模型。应用模糊区间评价方法对某省现有高速公路安全进行综合评价,其评价结果表明,该公路交通安全属于‘三级’,和专家实际评价结果一致,表明该法是科学合理、实用可行的,具有广泛的应用前景。     

Evaluation and improvement of a method for assessing HSMS from the resilience engineering perspective: A case study of an electricity distributor

This article presents an evaluation and proposals for improving a method for assessing health and safety management systems. This method takes resilience engineering (RE) as its underlying philosophy and was originally devised and tested in a case study of a manufacturing plant. Four main changes were proposed in comparison with the original version of the method: (a) a framework for assessing the use of RE principles more systematically; (b) guidelines for developing an action plan as a result of the assessment; (c) re-organization of the data collection tools in order to increase their ease of use; and (d) procedures for facilitating the assignment of scores to the items assessed. The evaluation of the method, which was not restricted to the changes described in this article, was conducted based on seven criteria for evaluating safety assessment tools. Both the evaluation and the impact of the changes are discussed based on a case study, in which the method was applied in a company that distributes electricity.     

Risk assessment of sour gas inter-phase onshore pipeline using ANN and fuzzy inference system – Case study: The south pars gas field

Nowadays, pipelines have been extensively used for transporting oil and gas for long distances. Therefore, their risk assessment could help to identify the associated hazards and take necessary actions to eliminate or reduce the risk. In the present research, an artificial neural network (ANN) and a fuzzy inference system (FIS) were used to prepare a new model for pipeline risk assessment with higher accuracy. To reach this objective, the Muhlbauer method, as a common method for oil and gas pipeline risk assessment, was used for determining important and influential factors in the pipeline performance. Mamdani fuzzy model was developed in Matlab software by considering expert knowledge. The outcomes of this model were used to develop an ANN. To verify the developed model, the inter-phase shore pipe of phase 9–10 refinery in the South Pars Gas field was considered as a case study. The results showed that the proposed model gives a higher level of accuracy, precision, and reliability in terms of pipe risk assessment.     

On the use of criteria based on the SMART acronym to assess quality of performance indicators for safety management in process industries

Management of safety, and barriers in particular, includes using information expressing performance, i.e. use of safety performance indicators. For this information to be useful, the indicators should demonstrate adequate quality. In other words, they should satisfy some predefined set of quality criteria. Without showing adequate quality, the indicators are generally unable to provide sufficient support for barrier management, which could result in poor decisions. In this article, the use of the SMART criteria is considered to assess the quality of safety performance indicators in process industries. SMART being an acronym for ‘specificity’, ‘measurability’ or ‘manageability’, ‘achievability’, ‘relevancy’ and ‘time-based’, covering five key aspects and criteria for assessing the quality of an indicator. A discussion on whether the indicators are able to demonstrate adequate quality by satisfying these criteria has been conducted. The finding is that all of the SMART criteria should be satisfied for a safety performance indicator to demonstrate acceptable quality and to be regarded as useful to support barrier management decision-making. However, it has also been observed that including the ‘M’ criterion in the assessment of quality is not needed. When all the other criteria are satisfied there is no way the conclusions could be misleading as a result of measurability or manageability aspects. Hence, for safety performance indicator quality, only four of the criteria are assessed and suggested for such situations to shorten the acronym to ‘STAR’. A key safety indicator used in downstream process facilities, i.e. ‘dangerous fluid overfilling events’, motivated from the 2005 Texas City refinery accident, is used to illustrate the situation. The indicator is also applied to another incident, the Buncefield oil storage depot's accident in 2005, to provide a broader context for using it. The findings in this article could also be applied beyond the context studied. This means that, despite focusing on safety indicators in the process industries, the findings are considered as relevant and applicable to other types of performance indicators and to other energy industries.     

复杂社会技术系统安全事故的成因结构敏感性及预防对策研究

简要回顾现有复杂社会技术系统安全事故的成因理论存在的局限性,根据大量统计资料和经验总结构建事故成因理论的缺陷。该研究试图从分析和推理入手,根据复杂社会技术系统运行机制及事故成因结构敏感性特征,探索由于新技术快速普及应用而不断涌现的复杂社会技术系统的失效机制及事故的成因理论;解释复杂社会技术系统安全事故的严重程度差异性、时间方向性及情境依赖性;为任何因新技术普及应用而产生的人造系统的安全分析及事故预防提供理论和方法支撑。