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Concurrent Engineering used to Implement Risk & Hazard Control

Authors:
Gheorghe Florea
Luiza Ocheana

Keywords: SIS; Redundancy; Remote intervention; Simulation; Diagnostics; Hierarchical decision; Concurrent engineering; Risk and hazard assessment

Abstract:
In the current modern and industry-based society, automation is the key to success. The technology has changed over the last decades towards full control systems. Requirement specifications for Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) form the core of Risk and Hazard (RH) assessment. SIS are the most flexible and effective tools for guarding the plants. Despite the debate pro and against the integrated approach of Basic Process Control System (BPCS) and SIS, more than a safety system is needed to keep the process running even with diminished functionalities instead of shutdown the plant. Our new approach is based on how a new hierarchical decision level can complete the mission regarding safety when the control room is not functional or cannot act properly in a hazard situation. Layers of protection should be used in order to reduce the risk to an acceptable level. The key is RH control implemented as a superior hierarchical level of decision and intervention. Concurrent Engineering (CE) applied to process control is the approach that can help the designers to achieve this level and efficiently use the proposed system architecture. Basically, a remote Process Help Center will host not only the copy of the process control system but the strategy and algorithms (RH control) to accomplish the safety task and to keep the process running. The CE and simulation are basic approaches to build the functionalities of new systems.

Pages: 90 to 96

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011

Publication date: October 23, 2011

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4316

ISBN: 978-1-61208-168-7

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from October 23, 2011 to October 29, 2011