Towards BBN based risk modelling of process plants

Abstract

Recent disasters in high hazard industries such as Oil and Gas Exploration (The Deepwater Horizon) and Petrochemical production (Texas City) have been found to have causes that range from direct technical failures through organizational shortcomings right up to weak regulation and inappropriate company cultures. Risk models have generally concentrated upon technical failures, which are easier to construct and for which there is more concrete data. The primary causes lie firmly rooted in the culture of the organization and determine the way in which individuals go about risky activities. Modelling human activities, especially collectively rather than individual human errors as is done in most..