基于安全屏障模型的海上钻完井作业风险分析

海上钻完井作业面临海洋环境恶劣、浅层地质灾害等复杂工况,极易发生油气泄漏、井喷等事故。为有效预防海上钻完井作业事故,提出基于瑞士奶酪模型的安全屏障模型。采用事故树和故障模式及影响分析相结合的方法,分析作业过程风险。该模型根据挪威标准D-010,建立完井作业关井阶段的物理安全屏障和安全屏障控制原理图,在此基础上构建油气泄漏事故树和失效模式与影响分析表,找出关井阶段可能的油气泄漏途径。通过对重要度计算和风险优先度值排序确定作业过程中最薄弱的安全屏障和关键故障模式。结果表明,作业过程中最薄弱的安全屏障是采油树、油管和地面控制井下安全阀(SCSSV),采油树腐蚀、密封失效、油管接头密封失效和SCSSV开关故障是影响作业过程的关键故障模式。     

Application of dynamic risk analysis in offshore drilling processes

Process safety is the common global language used to communicate the strategies of hazard identification, risk assessment and safety management. Process safety is identified as an integral part of process development and focuses on preventing and mitigating major process accidents such as fires, explosions, and toxic releases in process industries. Accident probability estimation is the most vital step to all quantitative risk assessment methods. Drilling process for oil is a hazardous operation and hence safety is one of the major concerns and is often measured in terms of risk. Dynamic risk assessment method is meant to reassess risk in terms of updating initial failure probabilities of events and safety barriers, as new information are made available during a specific operation. In this study, a Bayesian network model is developed to represent a well kick scenario. The concept of dynamic environment is incorporated by feeding the real-time failure probability values (observed at different time intervals) of safety barriers to the Bayesian network in order to obtain the corresponding time-dependent variations in kick consequences. This study reveals the importance of real-time monitoring of safety barrier performances and quantitatively shows the effect of deterioration of barrier performance on kick consequence probabilities. The Macondo blowout incident is used to demonstrate how early warnings in barrier probability variations could have been observed and adequately managed to prevent escalation to severe consequences.     

Resilience assessment of chemical industrial areas during Natech-related cascading multi-hazards

In chemical industrial areas, technological accidents triggered by natural events (Natech events) may escalate. Complex cascading multi-hazard scenarios with high uncertainties may be caused. Resilience is an essential property of a system to withstand and recover from disruptive events. The present study focuses on the change of the resilience level due to (possible) interactions between cascading hazards, chemical installations and safety barriers during the dynamic evolution of fire escalations triggered by a natural hazard (certain cascading multi-hazard scenarios). A quantitative resilience assessment method is developed to this end. The state transition of a system facing accidents in the context of resilience is explored. Moreover, the uncertainties accompanying an accident evolution are quantified using a Dynamic Bayesian Network, allowing a detailed analysis of the system performance in different time steps. System resilience is measured as a time-dependent function with respect to the change of system performance. The applicability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated by a case study, and the effects of different configurations of safety barriers on improving resilience are discussed. The results are valuable to support disaster prevention within chemical industrial areas.     

基于LOPA逻辑的罐区多米诺效应定量风险评估*

为了更好地降低化工企业罐区事故造成多米诺效应的风险,提出1种基于保护层分析（LOPA）的定量风险评估程序。首先,阐述基于保护层分析(LOPA)逻辑的多米诺定量风险评估流程,即引入包括可用性、有效性及3种逻辑门定义及量化的安全屏障定量评估;然后,利用LOPA的分析逻辑将安全屏障融入多米诺定量风险评估框架中;最后,选取2×2 000 m3苯乙烯罐区为对象,识别防火层与喷淋冷却系统2种安全屏障并开展基于LOPA逻辑的罐区多米诺效应定量风险评估,得出安全屏障能有效地降低多米诺事故发生频率及罐区个人风险的结论。研究结果表明:该分析方法可为化工企业开展多米诺效应定量风险评估提供参考。     

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.     

Safety barriers: Research advances and new thoughts on theory,engineering and management

Safety barriers include physical and non-physical means in different industries for preventing the occurrences of hazardous events and mitigating the consequences in case they have occurred. After clarifying the relevant terminologies, this article reviews the literature in the domain of safety barriers in the recent decade, and categorizes these studies into barrier theory, barrier engineering and barrier management. Classifications of barriers, performance measures, modeling approaches and data-driven analysis for safety barriers are reviewed as parts of barrier theories. In the engineering section, the research advances are presented in accordance with design for reliability and safety, test and maintenance strategies, responses to dependent failures, and diagnosis and prognosis of degradations. Then, project and process management, human and organizational factors, and standardization and compliance management of safety barriers are summarized. Based on the review of literature, research perspectives on safety barriers for resilience, digital safety, security of barriers, utilizing data, and dealing with intelligence, are highlighted and potential challenges are mentioned. This study is therefore expected to be beneficial to the researchers of system and safety engineering, with systematically streamlining and innovatively categorizing the recent findings and insights.     

Cost–benefit analysis approach for the management of industrial safety in chemical and petrochemical industry

The high complexity of chemical and petrochemical installations determines a complex safety management of these establishments, therefore, there is a need to find innovative solutions to guarantee the prevention of failures and losses of containment from process equipment. In this frame, the use of the API Risk Based Inspection (RBI) assessment approach permits a significant reduction of maintenance costs and, simultaneously, the increase of plant's reliability and availability. To increase the level of industrial safety, a proper selection of measures is also needed, even if the adoption of such measures poses costs. Given that resources for the companies are usually limited, a comparison amongst various solutions has to be done with the aim to find the best one, based on a comparison of costs and benefit. To this scope, recently a software, named Inspection Manager, has been developed by ANTEA and implemented thanks to a cooperation with the University of Padova (Italy). The Inspection Manager provides support in the application of the RBI approach by means of the use of plant-specific data, which are stored in its database; its further implementation, presented in this paper, has made it able to support also cost-benefit analysis and, thus, the selection of measures to be adopted to prevent accidental events causing the release of hazardous materials. A case-study is presented to test the new functionality of the tool; after the identification of the most effective measures, a careful cost-benefit assessment has been executed as a basis for decision-making.     

Investigating the effect of geometric dimensions of median traffic barriers on crashes: Crash analysis of interstate roads in Wyoming using actual crash datasets

IntroductionDespite the numerous safety studies done on traffic barriers’ performance assessment, the effect of variables such as traffic barrier’s height has not been identified considering a comprehensive actual crash data analysis. This study seeks to identify the impact of geometric variables (i.e., height, post-spacing, sideslope ratio, and lateral offset) on median traffic barriers’ performance in crashes on interstate roads.MethodGeometric dimensions of over 110 miles median traffic barriers on interstate Wyoming roads were inventoried in a field survey between 2016 and 2018. Then, the traffic barrier data collected was combined with historical crash records, traffic volume data, road geometric characteristics, and weather condition data to provide a comprehensive dataset for the analysis. Finally, an ordered logit model with random-parameters was developed for the severity of traffic barrier crashes. Based on the results, traffic barrier’s height was found to impact crash severity.ResultsCrashes involving cable barriers with a height between 30″ and 42″ were less severe than other traffic barrier types, while concrete barriers with a height shorter than 32″ were more likely involved with severe injury crashes. As another important finding, the post-spacing of 6.1–6.3 ft. was identified as the least severe range in W-beam barriers.Practical applicationsThe results show that using flare barriers should reduce the number of crashes compared to parallel barriers.     

Application of machine learning technique for optimizing roadside design to decrease barrier crash costs,a quantile regression model approach

Introduction: In-transport vehicles often leave the travel lane and encroach onto natural objects on the roadsides. These types of crashes are called run-off the road crashes (ROR). Such crashes accounts for a significant proportion of fatalities and severe crashes. Roadside barrier installation would be warranted if they could reduce the severity of these types of crashes. However, roadside barriers still account for a significant proportion of severe crashes in Wyoming. The impact of the crash severity would be higher if barriers are poorly designed, which could result in override or underride barrier crashes. Several studies have been conducted to identify optimum values of barrier height. However, limited studies have investigated the monetary benefit associated with adjusting the barrier heights to the optimal values. In addition, few studies have been conducted to model barrier crash cost. This is because the crash cost is a heavily skewed distribution, and well-known distributions such as linear or poison models are incapable of capturing the distribution. A semi-parametric distribution such as asymmetric Laplace distribution can be used to account for this type of sparse distribution. Method: Interaction between different predictors were considered in the analysis. Also, to account for exposure effects across various barriers, barrier lengths and traffic volumes were incorporated in the models. This study is conducted by using a novel machine-learning-based cost-benefit optimization to provide an efficient guideline for decision makers. This method was used for predicting barrier crash costs without barrier enhancement. Subsequently the benefit was obtained by optimizing traffic barrier height and recalculating the benefit and cost. The trained model was used for crash cost prediction on barriers with and without crashes. Results: The results of optimization clearly demonstrated the benefit of optimizing the heights of road barriers around the state. Practical Applications: The findings can be utilized by the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) to determine the heights of which barriers should be optimized first. Other states can follow the procedure described in this paper to upgrade their roadside barriers.     

Safety performance evaluation of cable median barriers on freeways in Florida

Objective: This article aims to evaluate the safety performance of cable median barriers on freeways in Florida.

Method: The safety performance evaluation was based on the percentages of barrier and median crossovers by vehicle type, crash severity, and cable median barrier type (Trinity Cable Safety System [CASS] and Gibraltar system). Twenty-three locations with cable median barriers totaling about 101 miles were identified. Police reports of 6,524 crashes from years 2005–2010 at these locations were reviewed to verify and obtain detailed crash information. A total of 549 crashes were determined to be barrier related (i.e., crashes involving vehicles hitting the cable median barrier) and were reviewed in further detail to identify crossover crashes and the manner in which the vehicles crossed the barriers; that is, by either overriding, underriding, or penetrating the barriers.

Results: Overall, 2.6% of vehicles that hit the cable median barrier crossed the median and traversed into the opposite travel lane. Overall, 98.1% of cars and 95.5% of light trucks that hit the barrier were prevented from crossing the median. In other words, 1.9% of cars and 4.5% of light trucks that hit the barrier had crossed the median and encroached on the opposite travel lanes. There is no significant difference in the performance of cable median barrier for cars versus light trucks in terms of crossover crashes. In terms of severity, overrides were more severe compared to underrides and penetrations. The statistics showed that the CASS and Gibraltar systems performed similarly in terms of crossover crashes. However, the Gibraltar system experienced a higher proportion of penetrations compared to the CASS system. The CASS system resulted in a slightly higher percentage of moderate and minor injury crashes compared to the Gibraltar system.

Conclusions: Cable median barriers are successful in preventing median crossover crashes; 97.4% of the cable median barrier crashes were prevented from crossing over the median. Of all of the vehicles that hit the barrier, 83.6% were either redirected or contained by the cable barrier system. Barrier crossover crashes were found to be more severe compared to barrier noncrossover crashes. In addition, overrides were found to be more severe compared to underrides and penetrations.     

The impact of traffic barrier geometric features on crash frequency and injury severity of non-interstate highways

Introduction: The main objective of this research is to investigate the effect of traffic barrier geometric characteristics on crashes that occurred on non-interstate roads. Method: For this purpose, height, side-slope rate, post-spacing, and lateral offset of about 137 miles of traffic barriers were collected on non-interstate (state, federal aid primary, federal aid secondary, and federal aid urban) highways in Wyoming. In addition, crash reports recorded between 2008 and 2017 were added to the traffic barrier dataset. The safety performance of traffic barriers with regards to their geometric features was analyzed in terms of crash frequency and crash severity using random-parameters negative binomial, and random-parameters ordered logit models, respectively. Results: From the results, box beam barriers with a height of 27–29 inches were less likely to be associated with injury and fatal injury crashes compared to other barrier types. On the other hand, the likelihood of a severe injury crash was found to be higher for box beam barriers with a height taller than 31 inches. Both W-beam and box beam barriers with a post-spacing between 6.1 and 6.3 inches reduced the probability of severe injury crashes. In terms of the crash frequency, flare traffic barriers had a lower crash frequency compared to parallel traffic barriers. Non-interstate roads without longitudinal rumble strips were associated with a higher rate of traffic barrier crashes.     

中国民航业安全风险监测与仿真研究

根据系统安全的思想,通过对航空安全历史数据的分析和专家经验,从人员、设备设施、环境和组织管理4个方面,提出中国民航机务、空管、飞行、机场4个分系统安全风险监测指标体系,共102个风险因素指标,并合成为27个行业安全风险监测指标。以民航历史数据为样本,建立资源优化神经网络(RON)模型,将安全风险监测指标与中国民航安全指数相联系,分析安全指数的关键影响因素,达到安全管理决策支持的目的。通过建立的风险监测指标体系和RON模型,可以实现民航整个行业、各分系统及单个指标的安全风险监测和预警。     

Dynamic probability assessment of urban natural gas pipeline accidents considering integrated external activities

Urban gas pipelines usually have high structural vulnerability due to long service time. The locations across urban areas with high population density make the gas pipelines easily exposed to external activities. Recently, urban pipelines may also have been the target of terrorist attacks. Nevertheless, the intentional damage, i.e. terrorist attack, was seldom considered in previous risk analysis of urban gas pipelines. This work presents a dynamic risk analysis of external activities to urban gas pipelines, which integrates unintentional and intentional damage to pipelines in a unified framework. A Bayesian network mapping from the Bow-tie model is used to represent the evolution process of pipeline accidents initiating from intentional and unintentional hazards. The probabilities of basic events and safety barriers are estimated by adopting the Fuzzy set theory and hierarchical Bayesian analysis (HBA). The developed model enables assessment of the dynamic probabilities of consequences and identifies the most credible contributing factors to the risk, given observed evidence. It also captures both data and model uncertainties. Eventually, an industrial case is presented to illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of the developed methodology. It is observed that the proposed methodology helps to more accurately conduct risk assessment and management of urban natural gas pipelines.     

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.     

安全屏障在蒸气云爆炸中的控制效果研究

为了研究安全屏障在蒸气云爆炸事故中的控制效果,运用蝴蝶结法、TNT当量法建立研究模式,计算安全屏障作用下的事故概率、分析事故后果,并结合风险矩阵从概率和后果方面评价其风险程度。以事故概率、风险程度为指标,表征、分析安全屏障的控制效果,并对较高、高风险提出控制措施。将该模式应用于实例分析,结果表明该企业的安全屏障可以降低事故的发生概率。但是由于后果严重度的影响,其风险程度仍处于较高水平,需要进一步加强安全措施。     

Decision-making on process risk of Arctic route for LNG carrier via dynamic Bayesian network modeling

An increasing number of ships have chosen the suitable route to transport in Arctic waters during summer. Seeking a suitable model for risk decision-making in route planning is a necessary research topic at present. Due to its complex natural environment, there is significant uncertainty regarding ship navigation safety in Arctic waters. The process risk-based decision-making method to support route planning is established based on the dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) risk assessment model for LNG carrier collision with ice or obstacles in Arctic waters. The decision-making process for ship navigation is dynamically associated with time. Therefore, a Markov Chain (MC) is built for each dynamic node in Bayesian belief network (BBN) to realize DBN associated risk assessment, which is called process risk and is applied to decision-making. Three possible routes for ships sailing from the Vikitsky Strait to the Long Strait in Arctic waters were selected in conjunction with the objective daily change data of wind speed, temperature, wave height, and ice condition. Simulations for risk decision-making in the ship navigation process are performed. Application examples show that the ship selected either ROUTE2 (Vikitsky Strait – Laptev Sea – Sannikov Strait – Eastern Siberian Sea – Long Strait) or ROUTE3 (Vikitsky Strait – Laptev Sea – Proliv Dmitriya Lapteva – Eastern Siberian Sea – Long Strait) in August as the best navigable route.     

“三高”气田钻井过程硫化氢泄漏动态风险分析

传统的H2S泄漏风险分析方法不能很好地对事故发展过程进行动态分析,导致分析结果偏离实际。基于贝叶斯方法,构建了高温、高压、高含硫（“三高”）气田钻井过程中H2S泄漏的蝴蝶结模型并提出将其转化为贝叶斯网络,在事故已发生的情况下更新基本事件发生的概率。然后,假定事故后果在确定的时间段内发生的累积次数已知的条件下,更新安全屏障及事故后果发生的概率,从而完成对H2S泄漏的动态风险分析。结果表明,该方法克服了传统静态定量分析方法中的不足,可动态评估导致H2S泄漏的基本事件发生的概率和对顶事件发生的影响程度,并动态反映安全屏障和事故后果的风险变化,能为钻井过程中H2S泄漏的风险分析及防控措施提供参考。     

Operator competence and capacity - Lessons from the Montara blowout

The blowout of the Montara H1 well in the Timor Sea off the northwest coast of Australia in August 2009 was the first such incident in Australian offshore waters for 25 years. This article seeks to draw lessons for management of complex hazardous activities from these events by analysing critical decisions regarding well control barriers. Concepts such as trial and error learning, sensemaking and the need for multiple barriers are used to demonstrate why the organisation was blind to the developing problems and hence why lack of technical competence alone is not sufficient to explain the events that occurred. Three organisational improvements are proposed - providing active supervision, improved technical integrity assurance and better use of risk assessment. The article concludes with an appeal for changes in regulatory policy regarding safety to include organisational issues in addition to the traditional technical focus.     

Safety investment optimization in process industry: A risk-based approach

Process plant safety is a critical indicator of organizational performance. Adequate investment into safety practices to avoid future accident cost is therefore a beneficial strategy. The current approach to such investments in the process industry is driven largely by simple risk-based heuristics, insurance market premiums, organizational culture and management judgment. There is, however, an absence of an overarching methodology to assist such an effort. Therefore, there is a need for developing a robust decision-making framework for enabling systematic and optimal allocation of financial resources across all significant risk elements within a process plant.The present work proposes a safety investment optimization (SIO) framework for a typical process plant. Such an optimization approach targets maximal reduction of risk values across all potential hazards within the constraint of a given safety investment budget at the incipient stage of establishing a plant such that it saves future cost to company by reducing the risk from accidents. At the same time the framework takes into account the need to comply with the regulatory requirements imposed by the government. Additionally, access to insurance market as a strategy to transfer risk is also integrated. Finally, the residual risks are managed through investments in selective safeguards while ensuring that the benefits over-weigh the cost of such an exercise. For illustrating the application of the framework, a representative process plant with a select number of risk scenarios is chosen and all steps suggested by the framework are demonstrated quantitatively. It is anticipated that the proposed SIO framework will help optimal resource allocation for managing the risks implicit in a typical process plant.     

Inherent risk assessment—A new concept to evaluate risk in preliminary design stage

Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) has been a very popular and useful methodology which is widely accepted by the industry over the past few decades. QRA is typically carried out at a stage where complete plant has been designed and sited. At that time, the opportunity to include inherent safety design features is limited and may incur higher cost. This paper proposes a new concept to evaluate risk inherent to a process owing to the chemical it uses and the process conditions. The risk assessment tool is integrated with process design simulator (HYSYS) to provide necessary process data as early as the initial design stages, where modifications based on inherent safety principles can still be incorporated to enhance the process safety of the plant. The risk assessment tool consists of two components which calculate the probability and the consequences relating to possible risk due to major accidents. A case study on the potential explosion due to the release of flammable material demonstrates that the tool is capable to identify potential high risk of process streams. Further improvement of the process design is possible by applying inherent safety principles to make the process under consideration inherently safer. Since this tool is fully integrated with HYSYS, re-evaluation of the inherent risk takes very little time and effort. The new tool addresses the lack of systematic methodology and technology, which is one of the barriers to designing inherently safer plants.