An approach to potential risk analysis of networked chemical plants

In order to cope with severe competition in the global market, the local ar ea network installed inside the plant site has been connected with the Inte rnet for exchanging business information among globally distributed plant s ites. Though the information systems have given benefits through such open architecture, there are various risks as the result of the application of n etwork technologies. Much attention, therefore, has to be paid for chemical plant failures caused by triggering from outside parties. One of the commo n technological interests is a risk analysis method of network events that allows illegal access to the digital control system (DCS), In this paper, t he authors present a unified approach to generate fault tree and event tree structures between a network access and an anomaly of process plant. To il lustrate the validity of the proposed method, a typical networked chemical plant is taken as an example and analyzed. The present research will make c lear what parts are most important for the plant security. (C) 2000 Elsevie r Science Ltd. All rights reserved.