THE EVENT SEQUENCE DIAGRAM FRAMEWORK FOR DYNAMIC PROBABILISTIC RISK ASSESSMENT

Dynamic methodologies have become fairly established in academia. Thei r superiority over classical methods like Event Tree/Fault Tree techni ques has been demonstrated. Despite this, dynamic methodologies have n ot enjoyed the support of the industry. One of the primary reasons for the lack of acceptance in the industry is that there is no easy way t o qualitatively represent dynamic scenarios. This paper proposes to ex tend current Event Sequence Diagrams (ESDs) to allow modeling of dynam ic situations. Under the proposed ESD representation, ESDs can be used in combination with dynamic methodology computational algorithms whic h will solve the underlying probabilistic dynamics equations. Once eng ineers are able to translate their knowledge of the system dynamics an d accident evolution into simple ESDs, usage of dynamic methodologies will become more popular. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.