HAZARD IDENTIFICATION BASED ON PLANT FUNCTIONAL-MODELING

A major objective of the present work is to provide means for represen ting a process plant as a socio-technical system, so as to allow hazar d identification at a high level in order to identify critical areas a nd the need for further analysis using existing methods. First, a plan t functional model is prepared where a set of plant functions link tog ether hardware, software, operations, work organisation and other safe ty related aspects of the plant. The basic principle is that any aspec t of the plant can be represented by an object based upon an Intent (o r goal); associated with each Intent are Methods, by which the Intent is realized, and Constraints, which limit the Intent. The Methods and Constraints can themselves be treated as objects and decomposed into l ower-level Intents so giving rise to a hierarchical, object-oriented s tructure. The plant level hazard identification is carried out on the functional model using the Concept Hazard Analysis method. In this, us ers will be supported by checklists and keywords and the preparation o f the plant functional model and the performance of the hazard identif ication can be carried out manually or with computer support. Note tha t while this paper refers to process plant, the method and conclusions have been shown to be applicable to systems in general. (C) 1997 Else vier Science Limited.