Csni Technical Opinion Papers No 4

An introduction to risk assessment that utilizes key theory and state-of-the-art applications With its balanced coverage of theory and applications along with standards and regulations, Risk Assessment: Theory, Methods, and Applications serves as a comprehensive introduction to the topic. The book serves as a practical guide to current risk analysis and risk assessment, emphasizing the possibility of sudden, major accidents across various areas of practice from machinery and manufacturing processes to nuclear power plants and transportation systems. The author applies a uniform framework to the discussion of each method, setting forth clear objectives and descriptions, while also shedding light on applications, essential resources, and advantages and disadvantages. Following an introduction that provides an overview of risk assessment, the book is organized into two sections that outline key theory, methods, and applications. Introduction to Risk Assessment defines key concepts and details the steps of a thorough risk assessment along with the necessary quantitative risk measures. Chapters outline the overall risk assessment process, and a discussion of accident models and accident causation offers readers new insights into how and why accidents occur to help them make better assessments. Risk Assessment Methods and Applications carefully describes the most relevant methods for risk assessment, including preliminary hazard analysis, HAZOP, fault tree analysis, and event tree analysis. Here, each method is accompanied by a self-contained description as well as workflow diagrams and worksheets that illustrate the use of discussed techniques. Important problem areas in risk assessment, such as barriers and barrier analysis, human errors, and human reliability, are discussed along with uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. Each chapter concludes with a listing of resources for further study of the topic, and detailed appendices outline main results from probability and statistics, related formulas, and a listing of key terms used in risk assessment. A related website features problems that allow readers to test their comprehension of the presented material and supplemental slides to facilitate the learning process. Risk Assessment is an excellent book for courses on risk analysis and risk assessment at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It also serves as a valuable reference for engineers, researchers, consultants, and practitioners who use risk assessment techniques in their everyday work.

Every year at the U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, 100 of this country's best and brightest engineers, ages 30 to 45, have an opportunity to learn from their peers about pioneering work being done in many areas of engineering. The symposium gives early career engineers working in academia, industry, and government in many different engineering disciplines an opportunity to make contacts with and learn from individuals they would not meet in the usual round of professional meetings. This networking may lead to collaborative work and facilitate the transfer of new techniques and approaches. It is hoped that the exchange of information on current developments in many fields of engineering will lead to insights that may be applicable in specific disciplines and thereby build U.S. innovative capacity. Different topics are covered each year, and, with a few exceptions, different individuals participate. The four general topics covered at the 2008 meeting were: drug delivery systems, emerging nanoelectronic devices, cognitive engineering, and countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The intent of this book is to convey the excitement of this unique meeting and to highlight cutting-edge developments in engineering research and technical work.

This book explores the human contribution to the reliability and resilience of complex, well-defended systems. Usually the human is considered a hazard - a system component whose unsafe acts are implicated in the majority of catastrophic breakdowns. However there is another perspective that has been relatively little studied in its own right - the human as hero, whose adaptations and compensations bring troubled systems back from the brink of disaster time and again. What, if anything, did these situations have in common? Can these human abilities be ’bottled’ and passed on to others? The Human Contribution is vital reading for all professionals in high-consequence environments and for managers of any complex system. The book draws its illustrative material from a wide variety of hazardous domains, with the emphasis on healthcare reflecting the author’s focus on patient safety over the last decade. All students of human factors - however seasoned - will also find it an invaluable and thought-provoking read.

The Halden Man-Machine Laboratory (HAMMLAB) has been at the heart of human factors research at the OECD Halden Reactor Project (HRP). The HRP is sponsored by a group of national organizations, representing nuclear power plant regulators, utilities, and research institutions. The HRP is hosted by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Halden, Norway. HAMMLAB comprises three full-scale nuclear power plant control room research simulators. The simulator studies performed in HAMMLAB have traditionally been experimental in nature. In a simulator it is possible to study events as they unfold in real time, in a highly realistic operational environment under partially controlled conditions. This means that a wide range of human factors issues, which would be impossible or highly impracticable to study in real-life settings, can thus be addressed in HAMMLAB. Simulator-based Human Factors Studies Across 25 Years celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of HAMMLAB by reviewing the human factors studies performed in HAMMLAB across this time-span. A range of human factors issues have been addressed, including: • human-system interfaces; • alarm systems; • computerized procedures; • human-automation interaction; • staffing, teamwork and human reliability. The aim of HAMMLAB studies has always been the same: to generate knowledge for solving current and future challenges in nuclear power plant operation to contribute to safety. The outcomes of HAMMLAB studies have been used to support design and assessment of nuclear power plant control rooms.

This book addresses human factors research in energy, an emphasis on human factors applications in design, construction, and operation of nuclear, electrical power generation, and oil and gas assets. It discusses advanced strategies in the optimization of human and environmental performance, as well as personal and process safety. The book covers a wealth of topics in design and operation management of both offshore and onshore facilities, including design of control rooms, front-end engineering design (FEED), criticality analysis, offshore transport, human contributions to accidents, cognitive bias in decision making, safety-critical human tasks, and many others. Based on the AHFE 2016 International Conference on Human Factors in Energy, held on July 27-31, 2016, in Walt Disney World®, Florida, USA, the book fills an important gap in the current literature, providing readers with state-of-the-art knowledge in human factors best-practice approaches across different types of industries and energy applications.

The book comprehensively covers the various aspects of risk modeling and analysis in technological contexts. It pursues a systems approach to modeling risk and reliability concerns in engineering, and covers the key concepts of risk analysis and mathematical tools used to assess and account for risk in engineering problems. The relevance of incorporating risk-based structures in design and operations is also stressed, with special emphasis on the human factor and behavioral risks. The book uses the nuclear plant, an extremely complex and high-precision engineering environment, as an example to develop the concepts discussed. The core mechanical, electronic and physical aspects of such a complex system offer an excellent platform for analyzing and creating risk-based models. The book also provides real-time case studies in a separate section to demonstrate the use of this approach. There are many limitations when it comes to applications of risk-based approaches to engineering problems. The book is structured and written in a way that addresses these key gap areas to help optimize the overall methodology. This book serves as a textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on risk and reliability in engineering. It can also be used outside the classroom for professional development courses aimed at practicing engineers or as an introduction to risk-based engineering for professionals, researchers, and students interested in the field.