Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Built upon the analysis of the frequency and consequences of potential accidents, risk assessment is an important tool for safety assessment in process, nuclear and aerospace industries. Although the frequency of events with consequences of high severity is often very low, one might hope but cannot expect this to hold true forever. The information available on the near misses and/or incidents of low severity can be used to predict high-severity accident sequences. Recent accidents, such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the series of explosions and fires at BP's refinery in 2005, are worrisome. In processing facilities, such as those used for oil and gas production and processing, accident precursors (abnormal events) occur on regular basis. The essence of dynamic risk assessment is to capture the abnormal events, and to subsequently update the operational risk in an informed manner. The real-time monitoring of an operation makes it possible to dynamically conduct risk analysis as abnormal events are observed. Fault identification, detection and diagnosis tools play a vital role in conducting real-time dynamic risk assessments. The outcomes of the project, models, methodologies and an integrated software suite for safety management are important for the industry. These outcomes will facilitate real-time evaluation of risk and the implementation of performance-based safety standards (for example, IEC 61580) in process facilities, and also will contribute to the development of advanced tools for online fault diagnosis and accident forecasting. The development of the proposed dynamic operational risk management system will benefit Canada by promoting inherently safer processing of natural resources in a cost-effective manner.